On March 7, 1965, John Lewis and the Rev. Hosea Williams led a nonviolent march with 600 men, women, and children from Selma, Alabama, toward the state capital in Montgomery.
They were marching for the right to vote and in protest of the tragic death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who had died just days earlier from injuries inflicted by an Alabama state trooper as he tried to protect his mother from police violence.
As the marchers left Selma’s Brown Chapel AME Church on what became known as “Bloody Sunday” and attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met with brutal force by state and local law enforcement. The shocking images of the attack—particularly the sight of Lewis with a fractured skull—became a defining moment in the civil rights movement.
Two weeks later, I traveled from Mississippi to join Lewis, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and approximately 25,000 others to complete the Selma-to-Montgomery march. This time, we had the protection of the National Guard. We marched with renewed determination, buoyed by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s speech to Congress on March 15, in which he urged lawmakers to pass what would become the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In that speech, Johnson declared: “This was the first nation in the history of the world to be founded with a purpose. The great phrases of that purpose still sound in every American heart, North and South: ‘All men are created equal.’ Those words are a promise to every citizen that he shall share in the dignity of man.”
As King addressed the crowd at the culmination of the march, he reminded us all that the fight was far from over: “Let us march on poverty until no American parent has to skip a meal so that their children may eat. … Let us march on ballot boxes until we send to our city councils, state legislatures, and the United States Congress men who will not fear to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with thy God.”
Now, nearly six decades later, the battle for justice and equality continues. Instead of ensuring that no child’s hopes are denied because of race, religion, or place of birth, new efforts seek to erase and exclude. Racial inequities in education, housing, and economic opportunity persist, while voting rights protections—once secured by the 1965 Voting Rights Act—have been steadily weakened. The same courage that propelled the Selma marchers forward in the face of brutal opposition must continue to push all Americans toward the fulfillment of President Johnson’s promise and King’s dream.
Marian Wright Edelman is founder and president emerita of the Children’s Defense Fund.