Selma
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Image courtesy of the Library of Congress
Roughly 15,000 New Yorkers march in Harlem on March 15, 1965, in solidarity with the Selma protestors.
The
violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, had a domino effect: prompted by graphic images and news reports from Alabama, the bill that would become the
Voting Rights Act was introduced in the House 10 days later. Activists also organized a demonstration to protest the brutality, walking all the way from Selma to the capital city of Montgomery. On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law. Today, Members of Congress from both parties travel to Selma for the annual Congressional Civil Rights Pilgrimage. Learn more about Selma, then and now, through these oral histories.
