Selma to Montgomery Marches (1965)

CTL-E-5427 · Event · other · 1965

VERIFIED evidence grade of this record

In March 1965 the voting-rights campaign in Selma, Alabama, produced the three marches the intake timeline compresses into one stop. On March 7 — Bloody Sunday — Alabama state troopers and a county posse attacked some six hundred peaceful marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they set out for Montgomery, beating John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and dozens more on national television. A second march, led by Martin Luther King Jr. two days later, turned back at the bridge in deference to a court order; that night a white minister who had answered King's call, James Reeb, was beaten to death in Selma's streets. Under federal court protection, the third march left Selma on March 21 and walked the fifty-four miles to Montgomery, swelling to some twenty-five thousand people at the state capitol on March 25, where King delivered his 'How Long? Not Long' address. The marches converted the country: President Johnson addressed Congress for a voting-rights bill in the campaign's second week, and the Voting Rights Act (CTL-E-5429) was law by August.

The record

• Also known as: Selma Marches, Selma to Montgomery March, Bloody Sunday

Notes

Statistics: Bloody Sunday: March 7, 1965; completed march: March 21–25, 1965 (NPS). The intake paste's stop #28 (March 1965) is VERIFIED — and see the audit's Error 3: the paste sequences Selma (#28) before Malcolm X's assassination (#29, February 21, 1965), an inversion of one month; both dates are correct, the order is not. Before this merge the graph held NO Selma record at all — mentions only. · Curator's Judgment: DRAFT — for founder review: Selma is the movement's clearest lesson in spectatorship: a bridge, a camera, and a country that could no longer claim it had not seen. The record restores the full sequence — three marches, not one — because the second march's obedience and Reeb's death are part of what the third march was carrying. · Photo slot: CLEARED CANDIDATE — Wikimedia Commons File:Selma to Montgomery Marches.jpg, Public domain, license verified from Commons API metadata on 2026-10-15; not downloaded — visual pass follows merge per standing pattern.

Sources

• National Park Service, Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail — supports: the March 7, 1965 Bloody Sunday attack at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the March 21–25 protected march, and the route's 54 miles (primary source)
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, 'Selma March' — supports: the three marches' sequence, James Reeb's killing, and the marches' direct line to the Voting Rights Act
• National Archives, Voting Rights Act reference materials — supports: Johnson's March 15, 1965 address to Congress and the Act's August signing

Record CTL-E-5427 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: VERIFIED · 3 sources (1 primary) · CTL research: BCI-001, RELP-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

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