A Montgomery-based nonprofit organization that advocates for civil rights and racial equality is inviting the community to honor those who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement.
On March 7, at 1:00 p.m., the Civil Rights Memorial Center (CRMC), a project of the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), will kick off the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee Weekend with its annual wreath laying ceremony. The event will take place at the center, located on Washington Avenue. At 2:00 p.m., attendees will walk over to the Alabama State Capitol to rally for voting rights protections.
The date marks 60 years since state and local police used billy clubs, whips, and tear gas to attack hundreds of civil rights activists beginning a march from Selma to the state capitol in Montgomery, reports the Equal Justice Initiative (EJI). This would later be referred to as "Bloody Sunday."
On March 7, 1965, the activists were protesting the denial of voting rights to African Americans as well as the murder of 26-year-old activist Jimmie Lee Jackson, who had been fatally shot in the stomach by police during a peaceful protest just days before.
The march was led by the United States Rep. John R. Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Reverend Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). The marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and found themselves facing a line of state and county officers poised to attack.
When demonstrators did not promptly obey the officers' order to disband and turn back, troopers brutally attacked them on horseback, wielding weapons and chasing down fleeing men, women, and children. Dozens of civil rights activists were later hospitalized with severe injuries.
Images of the violence were broadcast on national television, shocking many viewers and helping to rouse support for the civil rights cause. Activists organized another march two days later, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. urged supporters from throughout the country to come to Selma to join. Many heeded his call, and the events helped spur passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 three months later.
The SPLC's annual event commemorates the ceremony spearheaded by the late Rep. Lewis who, in 2009, began leading a delegation of congressmembers, civil rights leaders, clergy and others to the CRMC, to lay a wreath in honor of people who lost their lives during the Civil Rights Movement.
Speakers for the ceremony include:
- Margaret Huang— president and CEO of the Southern Poverty Law Center and its lobbying arm, the SPLC Action Fund
- Tafeni English-Relf — director of the Civil Rights Memorial Center and the SPLC’s Alabama State Office
- U.S. Representative Nikema Williams — congressperson for Georgia's 5th Congressional District since 2020, succeeding the late John Lewis
Read more on Bloody Sunday in Selma here.
