March 21, 1965

About 8,000 demonstrators marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the beginning of the final Selma to Montgomery march. Protesting for black voting rights, the activists crossed the bridge four days after U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. ruled that the state could not interfere with the march as it had on Bloody Sunday and Turnaround Tuesday. The protest culminated on March 25 with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his “How Long? Not Long!” speech from the Capitol steps to a crowd of 25,000. In 1996, Congress designated the Selma to Montgomery National Voting Rights Trail a National Historic Trail.

Read more at Encyclopedia of Alabama.

Dr. & Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., 1964. (World Telegram & Sun photo by Herman Hiller, Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division)

The protest march from Selma to Montgomery in March 1965 generated widespread pressure on the U.S. Congress to pass the Voting Rights Bill of 1965. (Photo courtesy of the Birmingham News, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Protesters cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River during the Selma to Montgomery March for voting rights in March 1965. (Photo courtesy of Library of Congress, Encyclopedia of Alabama)

Historical marker and Edmund Pettus Bridge in the background. (Erin Harney / Alabama NewsCenter)

Edmund Pettus Bridge with Selma in the background. (Erin Harney / Alabama NewsCenter)

Historical marker along U.S. Highway 80 between Selma and Montgomery. (Erin Harney / Alabama NewsCenter)

For more on Alabama’s Bicentennial, visit Alabama 200.