Bloody Sunday Handout

Sebastian and Theo

Bloody Sunday

A quick summary:

On March 7, 1965 around 600 people crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in an attempt to begin the Selma to Montgomery march. State troopers violently attacked the peaceful demonstrators in an attempt to stop the march for voting rights.

Aftermath:

Background:

• President Lyndon Baines Johnson met with Governor George Wallace in Washington to discuss the civil rights situation in his state.
• By March 1966, nearly 11,000 blacks had registered to vote in Selma, where 12,000 whites were registered.
• In 1960, there were a total of 53,336 black voters registered in the state of Alabama; three decades later, there were 537,285 , a tenfold increase
• Generally speaking, Bloody Sunday was a very important component for the improvement of black civil rights.

• In the 1961 elections, only 130 of the approximately 15,000 blacks of voting age were registered voters.
• On 6 July 1964, about 50 black people wanted to register as voters. Sheriff Clark had them arrested as they entered the administration building.
• In summary, the blacks were disadvantaged in almost all respects. On Bloody Sunday, they finally decided to take matters into their own hands

^^

Sourches:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selma_to_Montgomery_marches
• https://www.history.com/news/selma-bloody-sunday-attack-civil-rights-movement
• https://www1.wdr.de/stichtag/stichtag-buergerrechtsdemonstration-alabama-bloody-sunday-100.html

If you are interested in a short but convincing summary of the Bloody Sunday, you can use this code: