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The historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., on behalf of voting rights for African Americans sets out from Selma on March 21, 1965. The late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, (SCLC), was at center. The Selma-to-Montgomery trek had been attempted twice in early March 1965, but had been stopped both times by Alabama State Troopers. Dr. King rallied the churches and other civil rights supporters to the Selma cause. Thousands responded and made the march to the Alabama capital. RNS archive photo by Wide World Photos Inc., courtesy Presbyterian Historical Society
Jessi Dodge

The historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in behalf of voting rights for Blacks sets out from Selma on March 21, 1965. The late Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., then head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, (SCLC), was at center. Others in the front rank were, from left: John Lewis, then president of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and now head of the Voter Education Project; Episcopal Deaconess Phyllis Edwards; the Rev. Ralph David Abernathy, then Dr. King’s chief aide and now head of the SCLC; Dr. King; the late Dr. Ralph J. Bunche, who was United Nations Under-Secretary General for Special Political Affairs; the late Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel of New York’s Jewish Theological Seminary; and the Rev. Frederick D. Reese, who was head of the Dallas County Voters League who is now a member of Selma’s City Council. The leaders wore flower leis sent by civil rights sympathizers in Hawaii. The Selma-to-Montgomery trek had been attempted twice in early March 1965, but had been stopped both times by Alabama State Troopers. Dr. King rallied the churches and other civil rights supporters to the Selma cause. Thousands responded and made the march to the Alabama capital. RNS archive photo by Wide World Photos Inc., courtesy Presbyterian Historical Society

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