At the height of the civil rights movement, local law enforcement in Selma, Alabama, attacked peaceful protesters. President Lyndon Johnson responded with a televised Joint Session in the House Chamber. He stood at the rostrum, far left in this photograph, to condemn the violent acts, and urged passage of civil rights protections: “For with a country as with a person, what is a man profiting if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” Two weeks later the House approved the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
