http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCMIXPOOJxk

Amelia Boynton Robinson describes how the Selma March came to together and what compelled her to get involved. She was fighting for her right to vote.  Dr. Martin Luther King inspired by her treatment and then Jimmy Lee Johnson was killed.  “We are going to march from Montgomery to Selma…” said Dr. King.

The post Selma to Montgomery Marches
March on Selma: Amelia Boynton Robinson appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UESvCXG1taM

On March 7, 1965, a group of around 600 marchers left Selma, Alabama, on a march to Alabama’s capital, Montgomery, as part of the Selma Voting Rights Movement. Shortly after leaving Selma, the unarmed marchers were attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by state troopers with tear gas and billy clubs. The day became known as “Bloody Sunday”. In this video, Selma resident and civil rights activist Betty Miles recalls how she and other activists prepared for the march, as well as what happened on Bloody Sunday.

The post Selma to Montgomery Marches
Betty Miles Remembers Bloody Sunday In Selma appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zvv2f6zsJEs

Reverend Thomas Lane Butts discusses meeting Martin Luther King Jr., as well as his participation in the march on Selma.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
Revered Thomas Lane Butts On The Selma March appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaYPvqYD-UQ

Actress Carmen Ejogo plays Coretta Scott King in the 2014 movie “Selma”, which is based on the 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights marches. Ejogo had previously played Coretta Scott King in the HBO production “Boycott”, and in this video she discusses portraying Scott King at different points in her life. Of the difference between “Boycott” and “Selma”, Ejogo says: “By this point, they’ve really been steeped and very much – they’re deep in the trenches at this point. And I think the threat of violence and death as being something that is a potential on their horizons I think is very much more palpable, and as a result there’s just much more of a burden that I think is very evident in the way that she conducts herself. And so it’s been quite an interesting thing to have played her at a much fresher, more sort of optimistic stage in her life and then to sort of move ten years on and to have all of that experience, all of that sort of that knowledge and research I had from playing her the first time and then adding to that with something that’s so much weightier.”

The post Selma to Montgomery Marches
Carmen Ejogo On Playing Coretta Scott King appeared first on Witnify.

Help us ID the people in this historic photo!

Scroll down to see who we have been able to identify thus far.

Photo of the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. Source: Abernathy Family Photos.

(1.) X (2.) Dr. Ralph David Abernathy (3.) X (4.) X (5.) X (6.) Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (7.) Coretta Scott King (8.) X (9.) X (10.) John Lewis? (11.) Donzaleigh Abernathy (12.) Ralph David Abernathy III (13.) Juandalynn R. Abernathy

The post Selma to Montgomery Marches
[Image] Identify the People in This Selma to Montgomery March Photo appeared first on Witnify.

Author: Rev. Dr. John F Baggett

“Martin has known from the beginning that the movement could cost him his life…”

Over the years I have recalled many times these prophetic words spoken to me with serene dignity in private conversation, by Coretta Scott King, wife of Dr. Martin Luther King. At the time, Coretta, Rev. John Porter, and I were sharing a plane ride from Montgomery, Alabama to Atlanta, Georgia on the evening of Sunday, March 16, 1965. It was the end of the first day of the Selma to Montgomery March. Dr. King, as we all know, was gunned down by an assassin three years later on March 29, 1968.

Coretta, whose home had been bombed during the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, was herself an amazingly courageous woman, risking her own life many times to walk by Martin’s side. We had both marched that day, along with almost 8,000 others, made up mostly of African Americans, but with a sprinkling of white clergy from around the country mixed in. As the four lane road between Selma and Montgomery narrowed to two, only three hundred marchers were allowed by the court to continue toward Montgomery. Most of the rest of us returned to Selma and some of us headed home. When we shared that plane ride, Coretta was returning to her family in Atlanta, and I was on my way back to my family and church in the stockyards area of Chicago.

My journey had begun two weeks earlier on Sunday March 7, which has come to be known in Civil Rights history as “Bloody Sunday.”  On that day I watched the television in horror and disgust as white law enforcement officers and deputies mercilessly beat and tear gassed a non-violent group of 600 African Americans as they marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. I knew in that moment that God was sending me to Selma that week.

On Tuesday, March 9, Dr. King led a somewhat larger group to the same bridge, but they turned around before there could be another confrontation. That evening, a friend of mine, Rev Jerry Forshey, who had participated in the Tuesday march, was in downtown Selma at a drugstore along with Rev. James Reeb, a white Unitarian Universalist minister. While Jerry was talking with someone in the store, Reeb left, intending to walk a few blocks back to the African American community. Reeb was surrounded by a group of men and beaten to death.

I arrived in Selma on Thursday. On Saturday, around 150 of us marched through the Selma mayor’s neighborhood to protest the publicly sanctioned violence toward the protestors. Along the way people threatened us with curses and guns. Some of our group were viciously assaulted. We were arrested and herded into school buses where our bodies were packed together so tightly it was difficult to breathe. We were driven to the jail where we were required to stand outside in the hot sun for over two hours. There was no room in the jail so we were led to a community facility for incarceration. After a sleepless night in which we feared the Ku Klux Klan would bomb our temporary prison, our guards disappeared and we marched uneasily back to the movement headquarters at Browns Chapel Church.

On Tuesday, March 16, thousands assembled outside the church. Communion was served and Dr. King spoke. Now protected by Federal injunction and national guardsmen, we began to march through the streets and across the Edmund Pettus Bridge toward Montgomery. After several miles of marching, the majority of us returned to Selma.

That night a kind African American older couple risked their lives to drive me to the airport in Montgomery. I lay covered by a blanket on the floorboard of the backseat of their car. If my white face had been seen by members of the Klan, we would all have likely been killed. Only a few days later, Klan members killed civil rights volunteer Viola Liuzzo on that same road.

And so I found myself sitting with Coretta on that plane ride to Atlanta. It is difficult today for us to understand the animosity that existed then. I have never before or since heard the level of vile language, or seen the kind of hatred in people’s eyes, that I witnessed coming from the white people, many of them no doubt active church members, lining the streets of Selma during the marches.

The Selma to Montgomery march touched the conscience of America. Selma was about voting rights for African Americans in the South. Through a variety of strategies, including poll taxes, voter registration fraud, and violence, African Americans in the 1960s were denied the right to vote. Selma was the catalyst that made possible the Civil Rights Act, which was introduced in Congress on March 17, 1965.

The right to vote is a right of every adult American citizen. It has been paid for by every soldier who ever fought for our country, and by every civil rights worker who died or risked beatings and death to end voter discrimination. No matter what our politics, we must never ever allow any group of people, especially elected representatives, to hinder and deny the legitimate rights of American citizens to exercise their right to vote.

The post Coretta Scott King
[Text] Remembering Selma and Corretta Scott King appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQTx4Iy_f0M

Sister Rosemary Flanigan discusses why nuns publicly marched from Selma to Montgomery with Martin Luther King Jr. and shares her memories of the civil rights gathering. From March 16 to March 25, 1965, civil rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama with the support of Federal officials, National Guard members, and the Army.

The post Selma to Montgomery Marches
Sister Rosemary Flanigan Remembers Marching to Montgomery appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2oQDo04NTY

Hear the motivational speech Dr. Martin Luther King gave before the march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965. He promotes non-violent protest and urges his followers to not be afraid.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
‘I Would Rather Die… Than Make a Butchery of My Conscience’ appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XArs06XavlE

From March 16, 1965 to the 25th civil rights activists marched from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama with the support of Federal officials, National Guard members, and the Army. They had attempted two failed attempts to march from Selma on March 7th and 9th.

The post Selma to Montgomery Marches
Historic Footage of the Successful March to Montgomery appeared first on Witnify.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSVNPHi4MQc

Hear Representative John Lewis recount the horrible events of the Bloody Sunday March to Montgomery on March 7, 1965 and watch footage of the police attacks that sent Lewis to the hospital. Civil rights activists attempted to march from Selma, Alabama to the capital of Montgomery three times before they were successful due to their National Guard and Army escort.

The post Martin Luther King Jr.
John Lewis Remembers the Bloody Sunday That Hospitalized Him appeared first on Witnify.