Injustice

Here Is Everything You Need To Know About Bloody Sunday

What The Selma Marches Fought For

People march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge during commemorations of the 60th anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ on March 9, 2025 in Selma, Alabama. (Photo by Elijah Nouvelage / AFP) (Photo by ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP via Getty Images)

While Bloody Sunday is one of the most famous Selma marches in American history, there were peaceful protests before it, fighting for the same cause: voting rights. According to the research database EBSCO, local leaders organized the marches before receiving support from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Protesters planned to walk from Selma, Alabama, to the state capital in Montgomery, calling for reform of the blocking of Black citizens’ rights to vote under Jim Crow laws.

Met With Violence

(Original Caption) March Halted. Selma, Ala.: Club-swinging Alabama state troopers move in on civil rights marchers to disperse them in Selma. The march, by demonstrators bound for Montgomery to “see the governor,” was broken up by state troopers and sherrif’s deputies.

Following Martin Luther King Jr.’s philosophy of nonviolence, the protests were peaceful. However, they were often met with violence from Alabama state troopers, who would often arrest, beat, and even kill the protesters. One of these deaths sparked the march that would later become known as Bloody Sunday.

Murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson

SELMA, AL – MARCH 08: A marcher holds a poster of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a civil rights activist who was beaten and shot by Alabama State troopers in 1965, during the 50th anniversary commemoration of the Selma to Montgomery civil rights march on March 8, 2015 in Selma, Alabama. Tens of thousands of people gathered in Selma to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the famed civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery that resulted in a violent confrontation with Selma police and State Troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

As we previously told you, the killing of 26-year-old farmer and logger Jimmie Lee Jackson sparked the protests on March 7, 1965. While taking part in a demonstration on the evening of Feb. 18, 1965, Jackson was shot in the stomach by trooper James Bonard Fowler as he attempted to protect his mother from being beaten by another trooper. Even though he was taken to the hospital that same night, he died eight days later, per The Root.

Source: Here Is Everything You Need To Know About Bloody Sunday