Selma: how the Selma-to-Montgomery marches 50 years ago helped end discrimination against black voters.

• Author: Brown, Bryan
• Position: TIMES PAST: 1965 - Alabama

Sunday, March 7, 1965, was a tense day in Selma, Alabama. That afternoon, about 600 people--mostly African-Americans, many still in their church clothes--set off from Brown Chapel AME church. Their goal was to walk to the state capital of Montgomery, 54 miles away. Part of an ongoing campaign spearheaded by civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., they were marching to demand the ability to vote, denied to them in much of the South.

As they set out, the mood among the marchers was "somber and subdued," John Lewis, one of the leaders of the group, recalled years later, "almost like a funeral procession," as if the marchers could sense the trouble ahead.

Crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the edge of Selma, they were confronted by a mass of helmeted state troopers with strict orders from Alabama Governor George Wallace: Don't let the group get any farther.

The nervous marchers came to a halt. "It would be detrimental to your safety to continue this march," Major John Cloud announced. Hosea Williams, one of King's aides, tried to reason with Cloud. But he had made up his mind. "Troopers, advance!" he commanded his men.

"The troopers ... swept forward as one, like a human wave, a blur of blue shirts and billy clubs and bullwhips," wrote Lewis, a U.S. Congressman from Georgia since 1987. As panicked marchers tried to flee, Lewis received a blow to his head, cracking his skull.

Troopers fired tear gas into the crowd, causing disoriented protesters to weep and vomit. "Men on horses were moving in all directions, purposely riding over the tops of fallen people," according to The New York Times.

"All I could hear was screaming, weeping, and gunshots," Lewis tells Upfront. "There was blood everywhere. I thought I was going to die."

Although no one was killed, 94 people were taken to hospitals. That night, millions of TV viewers were shocked when ABC interrupted a movie to show film of the violence.

The day of chaos, 50 years ago next month, would soon have a name: Bloody Sunday. It would become one of the most important events in the struggle for civil rights that engulfed America in the 1950s and '60s.

In 1965, the U.S. was still wrestling with an old problem. The Civil War, fought in large part to end slavery, had been over for a century. The 15th Amendment to the Constitution, ratified in 1870, had guaranteed blacks the vote.

Yet in the states of the former Confederacy, authorities continued to deny the vote to blacks, using such methods as "poll taxes" and "literacy tests." In many places, blacks who tried to register could suddenly find themselves out of a job, or even killed. In Dallas County, where Selma is located, only 1 percent of eligible blacks were registered.

Gaining the vote became a central focus of the civil rights movement. For more than a year, activists in Selma had been struggling to register black voters. But every attempt was stopped by local authorities. Finally, Selma residents turned for help to King and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

'Give Us the Ballot'

King, the charismatic symbol of the civil rights movement, brought a new energy to the struggle. "We must be ready to march. We must be ready to go to jail by the thousands," he said, firing up a crowd in Brown Chapel that January. "Our cry to the state of Alabama is a simple one. Give us the ballot!" In new attempts to register at the courthouse, King did go to jail, along with hundreds of...