Erstellt am: 7. 3. 2015 - 12:33 Uhr

The Selma to Montgomery March

Reality Check: A pivotal moment in the civil rights movement in America.

The Selma to Montgomery March, Bloody Sunday, March 7th 1965. A Reality Check Special on the events of 50 years ago and Ava Duvernay's movie Selma, on current release in Austrian cinemas. With contributions from Mitchell Ash, Professor of US History at the University of Vienna, Chester J. Fontenot, Jr., Director of Africana Studies at Mercer University, Georgia, Bob Thompson, Media Scholar and Joshunda Sanders, writer and US Journalist.

50 years ago, something remarkable happened in the small town of Selma, Alabama. The Reverend Hosea Williams and John Lewis led a group of 600 worshippers from Brown Chapel outside of the church. The crowd started to walk towards the state capital of Montgomery. It was going to be quite an endevour for the assembled crowd since it would cover 80 kilometres. But the marchers felt it was necessary since they wanted to draw attention to the lack of voting possibilities African Americans had in the deep south at this time.

After a short distance, the marchers reached the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River and Events took a turn for the worse. Governor Wallace had ordered the local police deputies to attack the marchers should they step on the bridge. And so the marchers were clubbed with sticks, there was tear gas and brutal violence against those who simply wanted to continue marching. It became known as Bloody Sunday and though it stopped the march in its tracks, in subsequent weeks, more marches were planned.

Dr. Martin Luther King arrived on the scene and US National Guardsmen were assigned to give the new marches cover. Along the way, the marchers camped but it was still a dangerous endevour depsite the new cover offered by the national guardsmen. Viola Luizzo, a white mother of five, from Detroit, was assassinated on the night of March 25, by Ku Klux Klan members. She had traveled to Alabama to support the voting rights movement by ferrying marchers back and forth from Selma to Montgomery throughout the protest.

African American men were given the right to vote after they were freed after the Civil War. However, most were effectively disenfranchised by states laws, taxes, literacy tests etc. In some regions, property ownership was a prequesite to be allowed to register to vote. Sometimes gangs would turn up blocking groups of African Americans who were on their way to a voting booth. In other words, the southern states did everything in their power to stop African Americans from voting.

The Selma to Montgomery marches led to a landmark piece of federal legislation, the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It officially prohibits racial discrimination in voting. What it did was very clearly prohibit any state or local government from imposing any voting law that results in discrimination against racial or language minorities. It also outlawed literacy tests and similar devices that were used to disenfranchise racial minorities. Many of the southern states continued to challenge the legislation right up until the 1970s but the Selma marches and the Voting Rights Act paved the way for a better fairer system.

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