Selma Campaign

• Deep South States


  Mississippi & Alabama-white racists traditionally maintained even stricter control than other Southern States
• Selma- Alabama

  • Population 29,000- half of whom was black
  • Despite SNCC campaign- only 23 registered voters
  • King organised a campaign against disfranchisement
• Selma


  City in Alabama
• Selma population was 29,000, half of whom were black
• Despite SNCC campaign, only 23 people were registered voters in Selma
• King organised a campaign against disfranchisement in Selma


  Because he knew Sheriff Jim Clark would react violently to protests
• King's black American protests

  Non-violent, sought to elicit white violence in order to demonstrate white racism at its worst
• King worked to expose white brutality & black disfranchisement in Selma


  In hope that it would force Congress to respond to President Johnson's request for voting rights legislation
• When King led would-be voters to try to register

  • Whites threw venomous snakes at them, a trooper shot a youth trying to shield his mother from a beating, Sheriff Clark clubbed a black woman
• Selma authorities jailed King for his demonstrations
• King wrote a highly effective letter while jailed
• SCLC & SNCC organised a march from Selma to state capital Montgomery


  1. To further publicise their cause

  2. State troopers attacked the marchers with clubs & tear gas

  3. Black activists christened this 'Bloody Sunday'

  4. Worldwide headlines & prodded Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act