![]() SNCC leader John Lewis was clubbed in the head and suffered a skull fracture. The marchers halted facing the troopers, and the troopers advanced on the marchers, attacking them with nightsticks and tear gas. On March 7, 1965, more than 500 marchers attempted to cross the Edmund Pettis Bridge, when state troopers confronted them and demanded that they turn around. ![]() SNCC and SCLC leaders decided to lead a march from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, to protest the gross disenfranchisement of African Americans. Furthermore, the city's board of registers used blatantly racist tactics to keep African Americans off the voting rolls. The city of Selma had 15,000 African Americans of voting age but only 355 were registered to vote. Selma, Alabama, provided the perfect opportunity for civil rights organization such as the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to stage a nonviolent campaign on the issue of voting rights. Still King and other civil rights leaders sought ways to bring the issue of voting rights to the attention of the American people. Together, he explained, echoing the anthem of the civil rights movement, “we shall overcome.”Īfter winning reelection in 1964, President Johnson realized the need for significant voting rights legislation, but, as he explained to Martin Luther King, Jr., he felt that such a bill would hold up the passage of other programs in his domestic program. ![]() In a moving oration, Johnson called on white Americans to make the cause of African Americans their cause too. On March 15, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to introduce voting rights legislation.
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