The sixth and final episode of Eyes on the Prize (which we won't be getting to for a while yet) focuses on a march organized in 1965 as part of the campaign to ensure voting rights for African Americans. The goal of the event was to march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery, but as the marchers approached the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on Sunday, March 7, 1965, they were violently attacked by state police acting on the orders of governor George Wallace.
Today is the 40th anniversary of that "Bloody Sunday". We will post more on this topic when we show the episode in the future, but with the anniversary right now, there are quite a number of links available on the web.
Some highlights:
- The BBC has posted their original story from 1965, as well as a brief but good slideshow.
- The front page of the New York Times from March 7, 1965 can be viewed online as well, with the text of the article that ran that day.
- Current articles from the Chicago Tribune and Louisiana Weekly cover the commemoration of the original march, and also draw connections between the Selma march and the present-day use of marches by opposition groups in the US to change opinion and influence policy.
- Listen to a short (3.5 mins.) report from National Public Radio about the march, including a short interview with one of the march participants.
- One incident that led to the march was the killing of a young black man, Jimmy Lee Jackson, by an Alabama state policeman. NPR also tracked down that state policeman and spoke to him recently, in this report (4 mins.) that aired in the US today.
The widely-publicized Selma march, and the violent reaction to it, helped bring about the signing of the Voting Rights Act in the summer of 1965. Several provisions of the Voting Rights Act must be reauthorized before they expire in 2007, so we will be seeing lots more on this topic in the news in the coming months.
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