What You Need To Know
On the day we now know as "Bloody Sunday" close to 600 civil rights marchers went East out of Selma on U.S.Route 80. They only got to about as far as Edmund Pettus Bride six blocks away, where state and local police attacked and harmed them with tear gas, billy clubs, and other types of violence to drive them back into Selma.
"I gave a little blood on that bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the right to vote." -Rep. John Lewis
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The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54-mile highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery.
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The television coverage of the violence shocked people all around the nation.It encouraged an outpouring of support for the voting rights movement from whites throughout the country: priests, ministers, nuns, rabbis, labor leaders, students, and ordinary citizens poured into Selma to stand with the marchers An estimated 800 volunteers from 22 states arrived in l the days after Bloody Sunday.
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