page_title: Martin Luther King Jr.
section_title: Voting rights
hierarchical_section_title: Martin Luther King Jr. / Civil rights work / Voting rights
caption_attribution_description: Bloody Sunday - Alabama police attack Selma-to-Montgomery Marchers, 1965.
context_page_description: Martin Luther King, Jr. was an American pastor, activist, humanitarian, and leader in the Civil Rights Movement. He was best known for improving civil rights by using nonviolent civil disobedience, based on his Christian beliefs. Because he was both a Ph.D. and a pastor, King is sometimes called the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Jr., or just Dr King. He is also known by his initials MLK.
  King worked hard to make people understand that not only blacks, but that all races should always be treated equally to white people. He gave speeches to encourage African Americans to protest without using violence.
  Led by Dr. King and others, many African Americans used nonviolent, peaceful strategies to fight for their civil rights. These strategies included sit-ins, boycotts, and protest marches. Often, they were attacked by white police officers or people who did not want African Americans to have more rights. However, no matter how badly they were attacked, Dr. King and his followers never fought back.
  King also helped to organize the 1963 March on Washington, where he delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech. The next year, he won the Nobel Peace Prize.
context_section_description: King and many others then started working on the problem of racism in voting.  At the time, many of the Southern states had laws which made it very hard or impossible for African-Americans to vote.  For example, they would make African Americans pay extra taxes, pass reading tests, or pass tests about the Constitution.  White people did not have to do these things.
  In 1963 and 1964, civil rights groups in Selma, Alabama had been trying to sign African-American people up to vote, but they had not been able to.  At the time, 99% of the people signed up to vote in Selma were white.  However, the government workers who signed up voters were all white.  They refused to sign up African-Americans.  In January 1965, these civil rights groups asked King and the SCLC to help them.  Together, they started working on voting rights.  However, the next month, an African-American man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by a police officer during a peaceful march.  Jackson died.pp. 121–123  Many African-American people were very angry.
  The SCLC decided to organize a march from Selma to Montgomery.  By walking 54 miles (87 kilometers) to the state capital, activists hoped to show how badly African-Americans wanted to vote.  They also wanted to show that they would not let racism or violence stop them from getting equal rights.
  The first march was on March 7, 1965.  Police officers, and people they had chosen to help them, attacked the marchers with clubs and tear gas.  They threatened to throw the marchers off the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Seventeen marchers had to go to the hospital, and 50 others were also injured.  This day came to be called Bloody Sunday.  Pictures and film of the marchers being beaten were shown around the world, in newspapers and on television.  Seeing these things made more people support the civil rights activists.  People came from all over the United States to march with the activists.  One of them, James Reeb, was attacked by white people for supporting civil rights.  He died on March 11, 1965.
  Finally, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided to send soldiers from the United States Army and the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers.  From March 21 to March 25, the marchers walked along the "Jefferson Davis Highway" from Selma to Montgomery.  Led by King and other leaders, 25,000 people who entered Montgomery on March 25.  He gave a speech called "How Long?  Not Long" at the Alabama State Capitol.  He told the marchers that it would not be long before they had equal rights, "because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."
  On August 6, 1965, the United States passed the Voting Rights Act.  This law made it illegal to stop somebody from voting because of their race.
caption: Police attack non-violent marchers on "Bloody Sunday"
exif: {"Image Software": "Google"}