Fun facts
- In Selma 40 years ago black people lived on a separate side of town than the white people.
- There was a bridge that separated the two sides.
- The black people at this time were living in much filthier, poor conditions than the white.
- Blacks could not change anything due to the major reason that they had no voting rights.
- To vote they had to pay a poll tax and take a literacy test. (Which they could not accomplish either)
- King had the plan for the first march to go to Montgomery and specifically ask the governor for help.
- Montgomery was exactly 54 miles away from Selma.
- The path with which they were planning to march passed through Ku Klux Klan country.
- There were about 600 people who had planned to participate in the first march.
- They never made it across the bridge.
- Water hoses, attack dogs, and cattle probes were some of the items used to force them back.
- In the second march there were more than a thousand people.
- They set off from Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, located in the heart of Selma. (This was where both marches had taken off from).
- The army and certain Alabama National Guard Units watched over the marchers.
- The successful completion of the March is known to be on March 25th, 1965.
- On August 6, 1965 president Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
- This is known as the most successful piece of civil rights legislation ever adopted by the U.S. Congress.
- The church where the marchers left from was built in 1908 by an African American builder.
- The governor that marchers were trying to convince was George Wallace.
- The first march was lead by Hosea Williams and John Lewis.
- A Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail was created in 1996. It ran a total of 54 miles.
- On the first day of the second march marchers walked seven miles where they then camped at David Hall's farm.
- The second campsite that marchers stayed at was known as Steele's Farm. They stayed here on the night of March 22.
- The third campsite was known as Gardner's Farm. It turned to mud that night due to the rain. Activists made burial mounds saying "Segregation".
- The fourth campsite was known as City of St. Jude. It was the final campsite that they stayed at on March 24th.
- Dexter Avenue Baptist Church is a very popular civil rights landmark that the marchers passed by in 1965.
- The Alabama State Capital was where 25,000 marchers finished their march.
- The first march was to protest the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson.
- The first march did not begin on time because King had not returned from Atlanta.