LEGISLATIVE RESOLUTION commemorating the 45th Anniversary of the Selma-
to-Montgomery March for voting rights that began on Sunday, March 7,
1965

WHEREAS, It is the practice of this Legislative Body to commend publicly
courageous acts which prompted important changes in State and National
history; and
WHEREAS, Attendant to such concern and in full accord with its long-
standing traditions, it is the sense of this Legislative Body to commem-
orate the 45th Anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting
rights that began on Sunday, March 7, 1965; and
WHEREAS, The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights represented
the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement;
and
WHEREAS, Despite the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the active attempts
of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to register the
African-American voters of Alabama, no significant progress was made;
one such place was Selma, Alabama; this small southern town of 29,000
soon became the focal point of the Civil Rights Movement; and
WHEREAS, Of the 15,156 African-Americans in Dallas County, Alabama,
only 156 were registered to vote; on January 2, 1965, Reverend Martin
Luther King visited Selma and gave a fiery speech; in it he stated:
"Today marks the beginning of a determined organized, mobilized campaign
to get the right to vote everywhere in Alabama"; and
WHEREAS, On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights
marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Route 80; they got only as far
as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, six blocks away, where state and local
lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas and drove them back
into Selma; and
WHEREAS, Nearly 100 of the marchers were hurt that day in Selma; the
next day, civil rights workers and clergy from across the Nation rushed
to Selma; on March 9, 1965, many marched to the Edmund Pettus Bridge,
where the marchers stopped for prayer and then, obeying a federal court
injunction, returned to Selma; and
WHEREAS, On March 21, 1965, after the court injunction had been lifted
and the Alabama National Guard had been federalized to provide
protection, the march began again; and
WHEREAS, About 3,200 marchers set out for Montgomery, walking 12 miles
a day and sleeping in fields; by the time they reached the Capitol on
Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong; and
WHEREAS, Less than five months after the last of the three marches,
President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the best
possible redress of grievances; and
WHEREAS, In 1996, the Selma-to-Montgomery National Historic Trail, the
highest tribute a road can receive, was created by Congress under the
National Trails System Act of 1968; like other "historic" trails covered
in the legislation, the Alabama trail is an original route of national
significance in American history, cannot be replicated, and is a desti-
nation unto itself; now, therefore, be it
RESOLVED, That this Legislative Body pause in its deliberations to
commemorate the 45th Anniversary of the Selma-to-Montgomery March for
voting rights that began on Sunday, March 7, 1965.