'Bloody Sunday' paved road to Obama White House, activists say
For almost 60 years, Grace Britton Sweet has had the right to vote. She can vividly recall the day she registered.
As an African-American woman living in the South, she was one of a few black Americans who had the right to cast a ballot as early as 1953. In states like Alabama, literacy tests were given as a way to bar African-Americans from voting. If a black person was unable to answer questions such as, "If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted?" they would be denied the right to vote.
In 1965, civil rights leaders organized three voting rights marches in Selma. The first, on March 7, 1965, was from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Bob Mants was one of the organizers. He remembers how they decided who would lead the march for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Williams and Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who was then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led hundreds of civil rights marchers over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As the marchers crossed over the bridge, which spans the Alabama River, state and local police waited on the other side in riot gear. The marchers were tear-gassed and pummeled with billy clubs. Network news cameras captured the violence that outraged much of the nation.
Bloody Sunday, as it came to be known, led to swift passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited any state from denying any United States citizen the right to vote based on race.
Bloody Sunday was more than just a singular event, and Walker and Mants say President-elect Barack Obama has benefited from the sacrifices made by the civil rights marchers they call "foot soldiers."
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As an African-American woman living in the South, she was one of a few black Americans who had the right to cast a ballot as early as 1953. In states like Alabama, literacy tests were given as a way to bar African-Americans from voting. If a black person was unable to answer questions such as, "If a person charged with treason denies his guilt, how many persons must testify against him before he can be convicted?" they would be denied the right to vote.
In 1965, civil rights leaders organized three voting rights marches in Selma. The first, on March 7, 1965, was from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Bob Mants was one of the organizers. He remembers how they decided who would lead the march for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Williams and Georgia Rep. John Lewis, who was then chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, led hundreds of civil rights marchers over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. As the marchers crossed over the bridge, which spans the Alabama River, state and local police waited on the other side in riot gear. The marchers were tear-gassed and pummeled with billy clubs. Network news cameras captured the violence that outraged much of the nation.
Bloody Sunday, as it came to be known, led to swift passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which prohibited any state from denying any United States citizen the right to vote based on race.
Bloody Sunday was more than just a singular event, and Walker and Mants say President-elect Barack Obama has benefited from the sacrifices made by the civil rights marchers they call "foot soldiers."