Bloody Sunday (KEY POST)

For our EOTO and mock trial this week we did, Brown v. Board of Education. Which was the case where the court found that racial segregation in public schools was an act of discrimination and that it violated the 14th amendment. So around 1952, the supreme court outlawed discrimination in public accommodations and ruled that separating children in public schools solely on the basis of race was unconstitutional. This case made racial segregation in the public schools in American come to end, which canceled out the “separate but equal” doctrine that was set in the Plessy v. Ferguson case in 1896. 

                                               

For our EOTO, our group was researching the negative occurrences that happened within the civil rights movements, and my job was to research “Bloody Sunday”. So to start it off I'm going, to begin with, the civil rights marches of 1965. On March 7th, 1965, there was planned to be a march that went from  Selma, Alabama to the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama; popularly known as the Selma to Montgomery marches. This civil rights march was to protest the death of a man known as Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was allegedly shot in the stomach by an Alabama state trooper during a peaceful protest earlier that month in Marion, Perry County. 

The Selma marchers were nonviolent activists, peacefully marching over the Edmund Pettus Bridge to proceed with the march to Montgomery, when all of a sudden, out of nowhere actually, came local authorities who violently drove back over six-hundred marchers back over the bridge. Like I said, these were nonviolent activists, simply having a peaceful protest; But local authorities such as the  Alabama State Troopers and Dallas County used tear gas and brutal physical force to try and stop the march. They used tear gas, which has similar effects to pepper spray and billy clubs to beat the protesters. These violent acts are what gave this occurrence its name, “Bloody Sunday”. The media caught this unjustifiable act that shocked the nation. This led to the United States Congress outlawing the voting regulations in Alabama and other states in the south. Even though apparently, every member of Alabama's congressional delegation voted against the course of action, it was vigorously passed by Congress and became the Voting Rights Act of 1965. 

More about Jimmy Lee Jackson. 

Since Jimmy Lee Jackson was a big part of the marches I was researching, I've decided to share some more information on him and why he was a part of the march that unfortunately led to his death. In 1962 Jimmies grandfather was rudely turned away from the registrar’s office after he attempted to vote in Marion, Alabama. Jimmy watched this happen and grew angry about it; so he decided to join the civil rights movement. On February 18, 1965, he was participating in a night march with two-hundred other activists. They hadn't even made it past the block before they were confronted by local authorities, who told them they had to stop. The marchers stopped before the officers when one of the marches, who was a black minister, went to the front of the march, knelt down, and began to pray. While he was on his knees praying an officer struck him on the head with I believe a billy club. Other troopers began to swing their clubs at the marchers, which obviously caused the marchers to panic and run for cover. Jimmy and his mother ran to the cafe and took cover there for a bit when Jackson's grandfather entered the cafe; he was bloodied and beaten. Jackson tried to take him to the hospital, but they couldn't make it through the panicked crowd and swinging troopers. The troopers began breaking into the cafe and continuing to beat the marchers with their clubs. One of the troopers took a strike at Jimmie’s mother and he lunged at the man hoping to stop him. The officer clubbed his face, threw him on the ground, and another officer pulled back his pistol and shot Jimmy in the stomach. Jimmy eventually made it to the hospital but ended up dying eight days later. It wasn't till a long forty-five years later that the trooper known as James Bonard Fowler, plead guilty to only a misdemeanor charge of second-degree manslaughter. He was sentenced to only six months in jail but was released early because of his poor health condition. He claimed that he only shot Jimmy in self-defense. Jackson's death was the inspiration for the first Selma to Montgomery march that occurred just a few weeks after he had passed; that led to what we know as Bloody Sunday.