It was March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, during the civil rights movement in the United States. Civil rights activists demanded voting rights for African Americans.
The marchers were met with violence, tear gas, and police clubs, resulting in many injuries. The attack was televised and shocked the nation, leading to widespread outrage and increased support for the civil rights movement.
In response to the violence, Martin Luther King, Jr. and other civil rights leaders organized a second march, which took place on March 9 but was halted due to a court order. Finally, on March 21, 1965, the marchers, protected by federalized National Guard troops and FBI agents, successfully completed the march to Montgomery, with King delivering his famous speech "How Long, Not Long" at the state capitol.
The events of Bloody Sunday and the subsequent marches contributed to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which aimed to overcome legal barriers at the state and local levels that prevented African Americans from exercising their right to vote as guaranteed by the 15th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This article is about the man who left an indelible mark on American history - Martin Luther King.
A timely article to remind us that racial division is wrong, no matter which direction it flows. foreword by Monty
Martin Luther King Jr.(referred to as Martin) was born Michael King Jr in Atlanta, Georgia, US, on January 15, 1929. His father, Michael King Sr, was the pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. King Sr had attended the Baptist World Alliance in Berlin, Germany, in 1934, which condemned the rise of Nazism. On his return home, King Sr renamed himself and Martin as Martin Luther King, in honor of the Protestant reformer Martin Luther.
Martin had an older sister, Christine, and a younger brother, Alfred, who would play influential parts in his life.
At the time of Martin's birth, anti-African American laws, known as Jim Crow laws (Laws) were spread across the previous Confederacy and some other states. Jim Crow was a derogatory term for African Americans, named after a song and dance routine, Jump Jim Crow, performed by a white actor in blackface in the 1820s.
The Laws first emerged in the former Confederate Southern States and others in the 1870s to deny African Americans equal rights after the end of the Reconstruction era, which followed the Civil War. The Laws expressly permitted segregation in certain situations, but there were also existing customs enforced against African Americans under the banner of Jim Crow.
The Laws, among others, which varied from State to State, would eventually include restrictions on African Americans as to: living in specific locations; the imposition of poll taxes and literary skills tests for voters; segregation in educational establishments; bans on sharing particular public spaces and facilities, such as lavatories and drinking fountains; bans on miscegenation (interbreeding); segregation on public transport; and so on, extending into most aspects of the lives of African Americans well into the twentieth century.
In 1890, the Louisiana legislature passed the Railway Companies Required to Furnish Separate Accommodations for White and Colored Persons Act, also known as the Separate Car Act (SCA).
Other Southern States enacted similar laws.
A group of 18 prominent Louisiana citizens, which was made up of African Americans, Creoles, and Whites, and led by a New Orleans attorney, Louis Martinet, formed the Comité des Citoyens(Committee of Citizens) (Committee), to challenge the validity of the SCA and through that, segregation in general. The plan was to have a person classified as non-white enter a whites-only railcar, refuse to move and be arrested. To ensure that the person was charged under the act, and not some other offense, such as vagrancy, it was necessary to stage the whole affair.
The Committee obtained the services of Albion Tourgée, an ex-Union soldier, politician, and lawyer who was strongly pro-African American. Tourgée provided his services at no cost and decided that the person used should appear to be white. So Homer Plessy (Plessy), a shoemaker who was white in appearance and one-eighth African American, was chosen. Christopher Cain (Cain), the owner of a New Orleans detective agency, who had the power of arrest, was selected to apprehend Plessy.
The East Louisiana Railroad Company (Railroad) was also in the plot because it wanted to avoid purchasing additional railcars to comply with the act.
On June 7, 1892, Plessy purchased a first-class ticket at the Press Street Station in New Orleans (location now known as 5 Homer Plessy Way) and boarded the Railroad train to the Louisiana towns of Mandeville and Covington.
Everything went according to plan. Plessy sat in the whites-only car, where he was asked by the conductor, who was in on the act if he was "coloured.” Plessy replied that he was but refused to leave the car. The conductor then brought Cain into the car, who arrested Plessy. The train was stopped while still in New Orleans, and Plessy was taken off the train, charged with breaching the act and imprisoned overnight. The following day he appeared before a Recorder in the Recorder’s Court (a local court of limited jurisdiction), which referred the case for hearing to the criminal District Court for the parish of New Orleans, following which the Committee posted a bond of $500 to secure Plessy’s release until the hearing. The judge assigned to the case, John Ferguson (Ferguson), did not consider the matter important, and the case did not come on for hearing before him for four months. At the commencement of the hearing, Plessy, through his lawyers sought an order that his prosecution be suspended on the basis that it was unconstitutional.
Ferguson denied Plessy’s application, so Plessy’s lawyers sought an order from the Louisiana Supreme Court that his trial was not to take place. That application was also denied, so an order was sought from the US Supreme Court, naming Plessy as plaintiff and Ferguson as defendant, that Plessy’s prosecution was unconstitutional. The US Supreme Court, in 1896, found against Plessy by a 7-1 majority, stating in its opinion concerning the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution:
The object of the amendment was undoubtedly to enforce the absolute equality of the two races before the law, but in the nature of things it could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races upon terms unsatisfactory to either.
and formalized the flawed doctrine of "separate but equal", by upholding the validity of the SCA, which it described as:
requiring railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that State, to provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races.
The Committee disbanded, Plessy paid the fine, and the Jim Crow laws floodgates were opened.
Such was the antipathy to African Americans, Woodrow Wilson, president of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, wrote in History of the American People, published in 1902:
The old landmarks of politics within the United States themselves seemed, meanwhile, submerged. The southern States were readjusting their elective suffrage so as to exclude the illiterate negroes and so in part undo the mischief of reconstruction …
And:
In 1909, during a meeting of African and white Americans in New York City, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People(NAACP) was formed. Its founders incorporated it in 1911 with the following object:
To promote equality of rights and eradicate caste or race prejudice among citizens of the United States; to advance the interest of colored citizens; to secure for them impartial suffrage; and to increase their opportunities for securing justice in the courts, education for their children, employment according to their ability, and complete equality before the law.
The NAACP then sought racial equality for African Americans, who were subject to lynchings in the South and other mob violence. Together with church groups and others, the NCAAP organized a silent parade of 10,000 African Americans in protest against the East St Louis riots, in which up to 150 African Americans were murdered by the mob.
Immediately following the Silent Parade, 11 members of the organizing committee traveled to Washington DC to present a petition to President Wilson and Congress, which contained the following:
… lynching and mob violence be made a national crime punishable by the laws of the United States, and that this be done by federal enactment, or if necessary, by constitutional amendment. We believe that there can be found in recent legislation abundant precedent for action of this sort, and whether this be true or not, no nation that seeks to fight the battles of civilization can afford to march in blood-smeared garments.
They were turned away by the president's private secretary.
Then in 1918, Leonidas Dyer, a white Republican Member of the House of Representatives from Missouri, introduced a Bill that would make lynching a Federal crime. The Bill was supported by the NCAAP and was finally passed by the House of Representatives in 1922. The Democrat Senators, who supported lynching, engaged in filibuster tactics (long delaying speeches). Despite having the majority of numbers in the Senate, the Republicans gave up, and the Bill was defeated.
Less than one percent of individuals who participated in the extra-judicial capital punishment of lynching were prosecuted and convicted in a State court. In many cases, lynchings were conducted in public with the consent of the police and the authorities, and white mothers would bring their children along to watch.
Henry Smith (Smith) was an African American youth born in 1876. In 1893, while Smith was acting drunk and disorderly in Paris, Texas, Deputy Henry Vance (Vance) used his club on Smith, who resisted arrest. Following that, while drunk again, Smith abducted Vance's three-year-old daughter as revenge against Vance. When Smith woke up alongside Myrtle, he later admitted to strangling her and fled the county. Smith was accused of raping Myrtle, but that appears uncertain. Following a nationwide search, Smith was captured and returned to Paris, where he was handed over for summary execution to a white mob of thousands. A ten-foot high scaffold was built labeled "Justice," and Smith was roped to a post on the scaffold to be tortured by Vance, his 15-year-old son, and Vance's brother-in-law. The Fort Worth Gazette, the following day, gleefully published the following article, which it capitalized for emphasis:
A tinner’s furnace was brought on with IRONS HEATED WHITE."
Taking one, Vance thrust it under first one and then the other side of his victim’s feet, who, helpless, writhed as the flesh SCARRED AND PEELED from the bones.
"Slowly, inch by inch, up his legs the iron was drawn and redrawn, only the nervous jerky twist of the muscles showing the agony being induced. When his body was reached and the iron was pressed to the most tender part of his body he broke silence for the first time and a prolonged SCREAM OF AGONY rent the air.
"Slowly, across and around the body, slowly upward traced the irons. The withered scarred flesh marked the progress of the awful punishment. By turns Smith screamed, prayed, begged and cursed his tormentors. When his face was reached HIS TONGUE WAS SILENCED by fire and thenceforth he only moaned or gave a cry that echoed over the prairie like the wail of a wild animal.
"Then his EYES WERE PUT OUT, not a finger breath of his body being unscathed. His executioners gave way. They were Vance, his brother-in-law, and Vance’s son, a boy of 15 years of age. When they gave over punishing Smith they left the platform."
Smith's body and the scaffold were doused with kerosene and set alight. The rope securing Smith burned through. He fell off the scaffold, rose and tried to run, was seized by onlookers, and thrown back into the flames to burn to death.
Schools were closed for the day so white schoolchildren could watch the carefully planned spectacle, which made the Ancient Romans in the coliseum, and the Spanish Inquisition, with its autos-da-fé (burning of heretics), pale into insignificance.
That was the milieu in which Martin grew up. He attended African American-only schools in Atlanta, Georgia, graduating from high school at 15. He then attended Morehouse College, previously known as Atlanta Baptist Seminary, an African Americans-only, liberal arts college, being awarded a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1948. He then attended the predominantly white Crozer Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, being awarded a Bachelor of Divinity degree in 1951. He then enrolled in Boston University, which awarded him a Doctor of Philosophy degree in 1955
While studying in Boston, Martin met and married Coretta Scott (Coretta), who was studying singing at the New England Conservatory of Music. She was a woman of great intellectual power and perseverance. They would have four children.
In 1954, the US Supreme Court decided in Oliver Brown v Board of Education of Topeka that segregation of black and white children in public schools was unconstitutional with regard to the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution. That impliedly overruled Plessy v Ferguson after 58 years and was viewed with disfavor in the South.
The same year, Martin was appointed pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama.
During that time, the buses in Montgomery were segregated in that the driver would place a moveable sign in the aisle to separate the back and white passengers. A female African American civil rights leader, Rosa Parks (Rosa), was seated in the black rear section of the bus when the white area at the front became full. The driver moved the sign further down the bus and demanded that Rosa and three other black passengers stand and vacate their seats to white passengers. Rosa refused, was arrested, and taken off the bus.
The NCAAP, which had decided to use Rosa's treatment as a test case, provided bail for her and appealed the subsequent imposition of a fine upon her.
The appeal became delayed in the local court system, so the NCAAP appointed its young member Martin to lead protests against the segregation on the Montgomery buses.
Martin achieved national prominence as a leader in the Civil Rights Movement. In December 1955, Martin organized and led a boycott of the Montgomery buses by the approximately 50,000 potential black passengers, which lasted for 381 days. During that time, he was arrested, and his home was bombed.
Shortly after the beginning of the boycott, the NCAAP approached some African American women who had been discriminated against on Montgomery buses and requested that they become plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction against the mayor of Montgomery, William Gayle, enjoining him from enforcing the bus segregation laws. Five agreed, including Aurelia Browder, but one was forced to withdraw by intimidation. In the ensuing case of Browder v Gayle, the United States District Court ruled that bus segregation was unconstitutional and enjoined Montgomery and Alabama from continuing the segregation. On appeal against the verdict by the city, the US Supreme Court in November 1956 affirmed the judgment and ordered that Alabama cease segregation on its buses. An application for a rehearing was dismissed in December 1956. Martin then called off the boycott.
During the boycott, Stanley Levinson (Levinson), a Jewish attorney from New York, raised funds to support Martin's campaign. The two became close friends, and when following the boycott, Martin and others merged several civil rights societies to form the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Levinson became Martin's trusted adviser. The SCLC was an organization whose mission was to provide leadership for the civil rights movement, rapidly gaining impetus across the South. Martin was elected president of the SCLC in 1957.
Martin was against abortion, whereas Coretta and Rosa were not. Rosa supported Planned Parenthood, which today decries Margaret Sanger as a eugenicist. However, since 1967, Planned Parenthood has performed about 9,000,000 abortions, many of those denied birth being black American babies.
In the following years until his death in 1968, Martin traveled millions of miles, delivered thousands of speeches, participated in demonstrations, and wrote books and articles. Levinson also wrote speeches and articles for Martin and helped organize events and raise funds.
Following 1961, Martin became acquainted with President J F Kennedy (JFK), and his brother R F Kennedy (RFK), the US Attorney General. At that time, the Director of the FBI, J Edgar Hoover (Hoover), advised JFK and RFK that Levinson was a committed Communist and that he was concerned about Martin's close association with Levinson. Because of Martin's continuing association with Levison and urging by Hoover, in November 1963, JFK had RFK authorize the FBI to wiretap Martin's home and the SCLC office in Atlanta.
In an FBI report dated March 12, 1968 (Report), three weeks before Martin's assassination, Hoover wrote disparagingly of Martin:
Another complicating· factor in the picture is the degree of communist influence on King. One of King’s principal advisors is Stanley David Levison. Ostensibly only a New York City attorney and businessman, Levison is fact, a shrewd, dedicated communist. Levison has spent the major part of his life advancing communist interests.
And:
This activity is not new to King and his associates. As early as January, 1964, King engaged in another, two-day, drunken sex orgy in Washington, D. C. Many of those present engaged in sexual acts, natural as well as unnatural, for the entertainment of onlookers. When one of the females shied away from engaging in an unnatural act, King and other of the males present discussed how she was to be taught and initiated in this respect.
Throughout the ensuing years and until this date King has continued to carry on his sexual aberrations secretly while holding himself out to public view as a moral leader of religious conviction.
That was before the days of cell phones and video cameras, and Hoover likely heard nothing more than a cacophony of voices speaking together.
The FBI also sent a letter to Martin enclosing a tape of a supposed sexual liaison. The letter, discovered in FBI files, impliedly suggested that Martin kill himself. It read in part:
KING
In view of your low grade, abnormal personal behavior I will not dignify your name with either a Mr. or as Reverend or a Dr. And, your last name calls to mind only the type of King such as King Henry the VIII and his countless acts of adultery and immoral conduct lower than that of a beast. ……….King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is only one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.
In 1976, the SCLC attempted to gain access to Martin’s FBI files, including the tapes, by commencing a civil action in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia. In Lee-SCLC v Kelley, the judge sealed all of the files for fifty years without giving any reason why in his written opinion, as depicted below. By that time, anyone involved in any criminal activity would be dead or beyond the reach of the law.
Three notable civil rights events in which Martin participated were as follows:
Birmingham Campaign
Birmingham, Alabama, was one of the most severely segregated cities in the South. Since 1936, with a break of two years in between, its police force and public facilities were controlled by Theophilus (Bull) Connor (Connor), the Commissioner of Public Safety for the City of Birmingham. Connor was an arch-white supremacist who even kept the police at bay while local members of the Ku Klux Klan assaulted the Freedom Riders, traveling on buses across the South. There was violence and bombings.
In April 1963, the SCLC joined with the Alabama Christian Movement for Human Rights (ACMHR) in conducting non-violent pickets and sit-ins aimed at businesses in Montgomery, aimed at bringing an end to segregation in those businesses, but not the whole community, which had been tried in Atlanta and failed. The ACMHR was led by Fred Shuttlesworth (Shuttleworth), an African American who favored mass protests.
Connor obtained an injunction prohibiting protests. Martin was arrested, along with other protesters, and jailed. In jail, Martin wrote his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, which he wrote largely on scraps of newspaper smuggled out of jail by his visitors. In the letter, Martin wrote that an unjust law should not be obeyed, and summarized Thomas Aquinas, who wrote in Summa Theologica:
Martin was released after nine days in jail at the request of the Kennedy Administration. Shuttlesworth and other organizers agreed to change tactics and have large groups of protesters march into the city center, which gained Martin's approval. The plan was to flood the jail with children, and parades of black schoolchildren, boys, and girls were arranged, known as the "Children's Crusade."
Hundreds of children were jailed until the Montgomery City Jail could hold no more. Connor then instructed the Fire Department to use high-pressure water hoses and batons on the children and other protesters, and instructed the police to set police dogs from their K-9 Division upon them. The water jets were of a force that could strip off paint. The children were bowled over, tumbled across the road, washed over parked cars, and had some of their clothes washed off. The police dogs attacked the children. African American onlookers responded by pelting the police with bottles and bricks. The police responded by having the hoses turned onto the onlookers. Photographs of the attacks were published in newspapers and caused an outcry across the nation.
JFK sent Burke Marshall, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, to Birmingham to broker a peace deal. Martin and Shuttlesworth represented the protesters, and eventually, a truce was established with local businesses, giving African Americans limited rights. In response, white activists bombed the Gaston Motel, which Martin had just vacated, and the parsonage of his brother, Reverend A D King.
In September 1963, two months before his assassination, JFK federalized the Alabama National Guard to ensure the integration of all public schools in the State. Five days later, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) dynamited the steps leading into the 16th Street Baptist Church in Montgomery, adjacent to the basement where five young African American girls were donning robes to sing in the choir. Four girls were killed, one partially blinded, and about 20 other worshippers were injured. The murder of the children resulted in riots. The four perpetrators were identified, but because of the reluctance of the FBI to release its files, three were not convicted until much later, dying in prison, and one was never charged, dying in 1994.
The bombing set in motion the ending of segregation in the US.
JFK had the bill that would become the Civil Rights Act 1964 (Civil Rights Act) prepared. A hostile Senate rejected it, but following his assassination in November 1963, it was passed by Congress and signed into law by his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), in July 1964.
The passage of The Civil Rights Act was a watershed event in the Civil Rights Movement. It was upheld as constitutional on the facts of the case, by the Supreme Court in Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964). The case has been cited as a precedent in hundreds of subsequent cases.
March on Washington
In August 1963, before the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and during the Montgomery Campaign, Martin represented the SCLC in the march on Washington DC, known as the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, demanding equal rights for African Americans in the South. More than 250,000 people of different ethnicity and backgrounds attended, and the march proved to be a resounding success.
In Washington, Martin made his famous ex tempore speech on a rostrum before the Lincoln Memorial, describing his dream for racial equality. He had delivered the speech previously and repeated it at the urging of Mahalia Jackson, the famous singer.
Selma to Montgomery Marches
The Civil Rights Act did little, if anything, to improve the disenfranchisement of African Americans across the South. Literacy tests were applied, and access to places of registration was restricted.
In October 1964, Martin became the youngest-ever recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He announced that he would turn over the prize money of $54,123 (equivalent to about $520,000 in 2023 purchasing power) to further the campaign for civil rights.
In January 1965, Martin and LBJ engaged in telephone conversations, discussing a strategy to make the public aware of the unfairness of the voting literacy tests. In February 1965, Martin advised LBJ of his intention to make Selma, the county seat of Dallas County, Atlanta, the focus.
In Selma, Sheriff James Clark (Clark) had organized a posse of about 300, including mounted Ku Klux Klansmen carrying cattle prods and leather whips, to disperse protesters. Clark himself carried a cattle prod and dressed in military clothing. He was accustomed to striking protesters, including women, with his baton.
On February 18, 1965, Clark was present in Marion, the county seat of Perry County, Alabama, during a non-violent protest by black protesters, despite Marion being outside his jurisdiction. A 26-year-old black protester, Jimmie Lee Jackson (Jackson), who was a deacon in the Baptist Church, was shot in the abdomen by a white police officer when trying to protect his mother and grandmother, and then clubbed to the ground by white police officers when he tried to stand. Jackson was refused medical treatment in Marion, and died in the Catholic Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma eight days later.
In response, the Dallas County Voters League, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the SCLC organized a march of protesters from Selma to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, located in Montgomery County, a distance of 54 miles. The intent was to meet with the segregationist Governor, George Wallace (Wallace), and request voting rights for African Americans.
The march commenced without Martin on March 7, 1965, numbering about 300, which increased to about 600 on reaching the Edmund Pettus Bridge (Bridge) over the Alabama River on the outskirts of Selma. The marchers crossed the Bridge and were met on the other side by Alabama State Troopers and a posse of vigilantes, including Clark and his Klansmen, many on horseback, all under Alabama State control. The force assembled to stop the march was organized by Wallace and Clark.
The marchers refused to turn back, gas canisters were thrown into the crowd, and baton-wielding police and horsemen charged into the melee, which would go down in infamy as Bloody Sunday.
Police used batons and high-pressure fire hoses on the marchers, while many of the posse used rubber tubing, wrapped in barbed wire, as cudgels. Upwards of 70 protesters were injured, including Amelia Boynton, a leader of the march, who was beaten unconscious on the Bridge.
The marchers were driven back across the Bridge to Selma, with the injured attending the Good Samaritan Hospital. Injuries included broken teeth, bone fractures, bruises, cuts, and abrasions.
Immediately following Bloody Sunday, LBJ denounced the brutality and promised to send a voting rights bill to Congress within a few days.
A second march was planned for March 9, 1965, and the SCLC sought an immediate injunction from US District Court Judge Frank Johnson (Judge Johnson), restraining the authorities from interfering. Judge Johnson required a few more days to decide and issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the march. Many protesters arrived in Selma to join the march, and the SCLC was unwilling to postpone. An agreement was reached with the authorities that there would only be a token march to the Selma side of the Bridge.
On March 9, 1965, Martin led 2,500 marchers to the Bridge, held a prayer meeting, and then led the marchers back to Selma, much to the dismay of many, as only the SCLC was aware of the agreement to do so. The march became known as Turnaround Tuesday.
That night in Selma, four KKK members beat up with batons, three white pastors who had come to Selma for the march. One of those injured, Reverend James Reeb from Boston, died in hospital two days later.
On March 15, 1965, LBJ, who expressed his abhorrence of the violence, convened a joint session of Congress, and requested that a voting rights act be passed.
On March 17, 1965, Judge Johnson set aside the injunction prohibiting the march to Montgomery, and ruled that citizens had the right to march in groups, even along public highways. He limited the original number of marchers to 300, given the narrowness of Highway 80 passing through Lowndes County, between Dallas and Montgomery Counties.
On March 20, 1965, LBJ federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers.
The march set out on March 21, 1965, led by Martin, and arrived in Montgomery on March 25, 1965, having grown to 25,000 in number. Martin delivered a rousing speech on the steps of the State Capitol Building and then, with the marchers, approached the door to the building, which was guarded by state troopers, to deliver a petition to Wallace. Martin was advised that Wallace was not in, but he and the marchers waited until one of Wallace's secretaries emerged to take the petition.
The Voting Rights Act, following approval by Congress, was signed into law by LBJ on August 6, 1965. The act, although applied nationally, was designed to prevent black voter oppression, including literacy tests, across the Southern States. The act was found to be constitutional by the US Supreme Court in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), thereby delivering a killer blow to segregation across the South.
The marchers were driven back across the Bridge to Selma, with the injured attending the Good Samaritan Hospital. Injuries included broken teeth, bone fractures, bruises, cuts, and abrasions.
Immediately following Bloody Sunday, LBJ denounced the brutality and promised to send a voting rights bill to Congress within a few days.
A second march was planned for March 9, 1965, and the SCLC sought an immediate injunction from US District Court Judge Frank Johnson (Judge Johnson), restraining the authorities from interfering. Judge Johnson required a few more days to decide and issued a temporary injunction prohibiting the march. Many protesters arrived in Selma to join the march, and the SCLC was unwilling to postpone. An agreement was reached with the authorities that there would only be a token march to the Selma side of the Bridge.
On March 9, 1965, Martin led 2,500 marchers to the Bridge, held a prayer meeting, and then led the marchers back to Selma, much to the dismay of many, as only the SCLC was aware of the agreement to do so. The march became known as Turnaround Tuesday.
That night in Selma, four KKK members beat up with batons, three white pastors who had come to Selma for the march. One of those injured, Reverend James Reeb from Boston, died in hospital two days later.
On March 15, 1965, LBJ, who expressed his abhorrence of the violence, convened a joint session of Congress, and requested that a voting rights act be passed.
On March 17, 1965, Judge Johnson set aside the injunction prohibiting the march to Montgomery, and ruled that citizens had the right to march in groups, even along public highways. He limited the original number of marchers to 300, given the narrowness of Highway 80 passing through Lowndes County, between Dallas and Montgomery Counties.
On March 20, 1965, LBJ federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers.
The march set out on March 21, 1965, led by Martin, and arrived in Montgomery on March 25, 1965, having grown to 25,000 in number. Martin delivered a rousing speech on the steps of the State Capitol Building and then, with the marchers, approached the door to the building, which was guarded by state troopers, to deliver a petition to Wallace. Martin was advised that Wallace was not in, but he and the marchers waited until one of Wallace's secretaries emerged to take the petition.
The Voting Rights Act, following approval by Congress, was signed into law by LBJ on August 6, 1965. The act, although applied nationally, was designed to prevent black voter oppression, including literacy tests, across the Southern States. The act was found to be constitutional by the US Supreme Court in South Carolina v. Katzenbach (1966), thereby delivering a killer blow to segregation across the South.
From 1965 to 1968, Martin continued his campaign for racial equality and moved to the left of the political spectrum. He advocated redistribution of wealth to alleviate poverty and opposed the ramped-up involvement of the US in the Vietnam war, which was killing of thousands of civilians by carpet bombing (Complete devastation of an area by bombardment.)
Martin's condemnation of the Vietnam War: Beyond Vietnam: A Time to Break Silence, delivered at the New York City Riverside Church on April 4, 1967, gained him the enmity of LBJ and other people of influence and resulted in a loss of popularity.
Although wiretaps on Martin had ceased in 1965, the FBI continued its surveillance on him and the SCLC. In 1965, Hoover expressed concern in writing to the US Department of Justice that Martin was meeting with known Communists who were endeavoring to inject Communism into the civil rights movement.
On the evening of April 4, 1968, while standing on the balcony of his motel room in Memphis, Tennessee, where he was to lead a protest march in sympathy with striking black sanitation workers of that city, Martin was shot in the head and died one hour later at St Joseph's Hospital.
The fatal shot was supposedly fired by James Earl Ray (Ray), who had escaped recently from the Missouri State Penitentiary, from a boarding house located across the street from the motel in which Martin was staying. Ray fled the scene, abandoning a rifle and binoculars, both containing his fingerprints, on the pavement outside, and traveled to the United Kingdom via Canada using a fake passport.
Two months after Martin's death, Ray was arrested at London's Heathrow Airport en route to Africa, and extradited to the US, Tennessee, where he was charged with Martin's murder. He confessed to the killing, thus avoiding a trial and a possible death sentence. In July 1969, Ray was sentenced to 99 years in prison without a trial. He later recanted his confession, seeking a trial, but died in hospital in 1998 while still a prisoner.
There are some unanswered questions, such as:
- How did Ray know where Martin was staying, and in which room with a balcony?
- Why did Ray leave incriminating evidence on the pavement while fleeing?
- Where did Ray, a small-time crook and prison escapee, obtain the money for his flight?
- Who provided Ray with a fake Canadian passport?
There are some books written alleging that Ray was part of an FBI conspiracy to murder Martin, but that has never been proven.
LBJ declared April 7, 1968 to be a National Day of Mourning for Martin.
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