Civil Rights Movement - Selma to Montgomery March (1965) (Part 3)

1965 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0300024983?ie=UTF8&tag=doc06-20&link... Watch the full film: http://thefilmarchived.blogspot.com/2010/09/civil-rights-movement-selma-to.html

Immediately after "Bloody Sunday," Martin Luther King Jr. began organizing a second march to be held on Tuesday, March 9, 1965. He issued a call for clergy and citizens from across the country to join him. Awakened to issues of civil and voting rights by years of Civil Rights struggles — from the Montgomery Bus Boycott to Freedom Summer — and shocked by the television images of "Bloody Sunday," many hundreds of people responded to Dr. King's call.

To prevent another outbreak of violence, the marchers attempted to gain a court order that would prohibit the police from interfering. Instead of issuing the court order, Federal District Court Judge Frank Minis Johnson issued a restraining order, preventing the march from taking place until he could hold additional hearings later in the week.

SCLC knew that Judge Johnson would eventually lift the restraining order and they did not want to alienate one of the few southern judges who was often sympathetic to their cause by violating his injunction. There was also insufficient infrastructure in place to support a long march, one for which the marchers were ill equipped. Further, a person who violates a court order may be punished for contempt even if the order is later reversed. But movement supporters, both local and from around the country, were determined to march on Tuesday to protest the "Bloody Sunday" violence and the systematic denial of black voting rights in Alabama. To balance these conflicting imperatives, SCLC decided to hold a partial "ceremonial" march that would cross over the bridge but halt when ordered to do so in compliance with the injunction.

On March 9, Dr. King led about 2,500 marchers out to the Edmund Pettus Bridge and held a short prayer session before turning the marchers back around, thereby obeying the court order preventing them from marching all the way to Montgomery. But only the SCLC leaders were told of this plan in advance, causing confusion and consternation among many marchers, including those who had traveled long distances to participate and put their bodies on the line in nonviolent opposition to police brutality. King asked them to remain in Selma for another attempt at the march once the injunction was lifted.

That evening, three white ministers who had come for the march were attacked and beaten with clubs in front of the Silver Moon Café, a hangout for segregationist whites. The worst injured was James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston. Selma's public hospital refused to treat Rev. Reeb, who had to be taken to University Hospital in Birmingham, two hours away. Reeb died on Thursday, March 11 at University Hospital with his wife by his side.

Blacks in Dallas County and the Black Belt mourned the death of Rev. Reeb as they had earlier mourned the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson. But many activists were bitter that the media and national political leaders expressed great concern over Reeb's murder, but had paid scant attention to the killing of Jimmy Lee Jackson. SNCC spokesman Stokely Carmichael was reported as saying "What you want is the nation to be upset when anybody is killed but it almost [seems that] for this to be recognized, a white person must be killed."

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[MuddyHarp1]

Very brave people. Let freedom ring. Those whites had balls.

[romeoandjuliet1968]

@carlawon Can you not see the white people also getting attacked in the video? We're not all anti-black...

[isaiah2498]

at 2:26 the music stops



[101pastor]

@MuddyHarp1 All of white people is not bad

[scottnsuzs]

@Sistarovat here, here.

[Sistarovat]

@sworder24 Your argument is like saying that there is no more cultural difference between an Englishman and an Italian than there is between two Englishmen. You really need to get around. And btw, if God intended for the races to intermingle and mix, why did he separate the races in the first place? Why did he make white people white and black people black? Why did he separate humans into three races if He didn't intend for us to stay that way?

[sworder24]

@Sistarovat

You're a very socially deprived person. Unless you support only breeding within your own family, everyone is culturally and genetically different! Figure it out man. The God argument just isn't good enough.

[Sistarovat]

God is the one that separated the races. To go against segregation is to go against God. White people and black people are culturally and genetically different and have no business mixing and mingling in schools.

[cuttheloop]

In case y'all have forgotten(via revisionist history) most of those whites, were/are Republicans...marching against the racist Dems who you empower and allow to enslave you today.

You were all hoodwinked allright.

[adamwilliams4405]

@MuddyHarp1

the Selma march and you're talking about whites?

sheesh

[carlawon]

@tookle2010 yeah, "sweetheart" you ever heard of sarcasm? I know when the civil rights movement began, obviously you made an attempt to be a smart ass, FAIL! try again pookie

[tookle2010]

@carlawon No sweetheart, slavery happened over 300 hundred years ago. The civil rights movement began shortly after and continues today. Perhaps you should take an African American Studies course