Major, I would like to have a word, can we have a word? Hall: And were you hit at that time? Lewis: At that time I was hit and knocked down. Hall: Where were you hit? Lewis: I was hit on my head right here. Hall: What were you hit with? Lewis: I was hit with a billy club, and I saw the State Trooper that hit me. Hall: How many times were you hit? Lewis: I was hit twice, once when I was lying down and was attempting to get up. Hall: Do we understand you to say were hit. Lewis: Right. All rights reserved.
Mounted police chased retreating marchers and continued to beat them. Johnson notified movement attorney Fred Gray that he intended to issue a restraining order prohibiting the march until at least 11 March, and President Johnson pressured King to call off the march until a federal court order could provide protection to the marchers.
Johnson promised to introduce a voting rights bill to Congress within a few days. That evening, several local whites attacked James Reeb , a white Unitarian minister who had come from Massachusetts to join the protest.
His death two days later contributed to the rising national concern over the situation in Alabama. Because it is not just Negroes, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. The following day Selma demonstrators submitted a detailed march plan to Judge Johnson, who approved the demonstration and enjoined Governor Wallace and local law enforcement from harassing or threatening marchers.
On 17 March Johnson submitted voting rights legislation to Congress. The federally sanctioned march left Selma on 21 March. Protected by hundreds of federalized Alabama National Guardsmen and Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, the demonstrators covered between 7 to 17 miles per day. And that will be a day not of the white man, not of the black man.
Afterward a delegation of march leaders attempted to deliver a petition to Governor Wallace, but were rebuffed. That night, while ferrying Selma demonstrators back home from Montgomery, Viola Liuzzo, a housewife from Michigan who had come to Alabama to volunteer, was shot and killed by four members of the Ku Klux Klan. Doar later prosecuted three Klansmen for conspiring to violate her civil rights.
Once Lewis and Williams reached the crest of the bridge, they saw trouble on the other side. A wall of state troopers, wearing white helmets and slapping billy clubs in their hands, stretched across Route 80 at the base of the span. Behind them were deputies of county sheriff Jim Clark, some on horseback, and dozens of white spectators waving Confederate flags and giddily anticipating a showdown.
You have to disperse, you are ordered to disperse. Go home or go to your church. This march will not continue.
SNCC leader John Lewis light coat, center , attempts to ward off the blow as a burly state trooper swings his club at Lewis' head during the attempted march from Selma to Montgomery on March 7, Williams and Lewis stood their ground at the front of the line. After a few moments, the troopers, with gas masks affixed to their faces and clubs at the ready, advanced.
They pushed back Lewis and Williams. Then the troopers paced quickened. They knocked the marchers to the ground. They struck them with sticks. Clouds of tear gas mixed with the screams of terrified marchers and the cheers of reveling bystanders.
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