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Historic photos from the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches

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Feb. 17: African Americans stand in line in the rain to try to register for a voter registration test in Selma, Ala.
March 5: the Camden mayor and his auxiliary police, armed with shotguns and rifles, form a roadblock to stop 150 African Americans from marching into town.
March 5: About 150 African Americans pray along a roadside near Camden, Ala. after they were stopped by the mayor and deputies from marching into the city.
March 7: State troopers use clubs against march participants in Selma, Ala. At foreground right, John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.
March 7: S.W. Boynton, wife of a civil right's leader, is carried and another injured man tended to after they were injured when state police broke up a demonstration in Selma.
March 7: State troopers, ordered by Gov. George Wallace, break up a demonstration march in Selma, Ala., on what became known as "Bloody Sunday."
March 9: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., joins hands with other African American leaders singing "We Shall Overcome" at a church rally in Selma, Ala.
March 10: a long line of demonstrators approaches a contingent of state troopers who turned them back during a voters rights march at Selma, Ala.
March 11: voters rights demonstrators sleep on the street in Selma, Ala. after several attempted marches were halted by police.
March 13: police block demonstrators attempting to push through their cordon in Selma, Ala. during a protest for voting rights.
March 13: police officers hold back demonstrators who attempted to march to the courthouse in Selma, Ala.
March 13: demonstrators join hands under a tarp to sing freedom songs in Selma, Ala. This group stood for two days, mostly in the rain, in a voter registration protest.
March 16: mounted state and county police officers ride their horses into a group of demonstrators after they refused to disperse in Montgomery, Ala.
March 17: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. uses a megaphone to address demonstrators assembled at the courthouse in Montgomery, Ala.
March, 1965: Martin Luther King, center, leads a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala.
March 17: thousands of demonstrators march to the Montgomery courthouse behind Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to protest treatment of demonstrators by police during an attempted march.
March 18: members of the Organization for Better Government march with a Confederate flag away from the capitol in Montgomery, Ala.
March 18: police carry a demonstrator into a police vehicle after a group picketed, and refused to disperse after an hour and a half. About 80 were arrested.
March 19: Willie Ricks, pleads with State Troopers to permit him and other voters rights demonstrators to picket on the sidewalk of the state capitol in Montgomery. They refused.
March 19: nearly 400 demonstrators line up in the city's courtyard in Selma, Ala. after they were arrested in an attempted march on the home of the Selma mayor.
March 20: President Lyndon B. Johnson called in National Guardsmen to protect marchers planning to march from Selma, Ala. to the state capitol at Montgomery.
March 21: Dr. Martin Luther King, foreground row, fifth from right, waves as marchers stream across the Alabama River on the first of a five day, 50-mile march.
March 21: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. leads demonstrators cross the Alabama River on the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma, Ala. at the start of a five day, 50-mile march.
March 22: a boy waves from a porch as marchers led by Dr. Martin Luther King leave their camp near Selma, Ala., to resume their voters rights protest march.
March 22: New York Post Writer David Murray walks with civil rights marchers about ten miles from Selma, Ala.
March 22: participants in first leg of the 50-mile march from Selma to the Alabama state capitol at Montgomery, warm themselves around a fire in an oil drum.
March 25: state troopers block the steps of the Alabama state capitol at Montgomery, Ala. from civil rights marchers at the end of their five-day march from Selma, Ala.
March 25: civil rights marchers in front of the Alabama State Capitol at the end of their 5-day march from Selma to protest discrimination in the state's voting practices.
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Feb. 17: African Americans stand in line in the rain to try to register for a voter registration test in Selma, Ala.
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Related Topics

  • PHOTOS
  • HISTORY
  • BLACK HISTORY
  • CIVIL RIGHTS
  • SELMA
  • MARTIN LUTHER KING JR
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