Selma’s Bloody Sunday to be commemorated downtown March 1
Staff report
YOUNGSTOWN
In commemoration of “Bloody Sunday” 50 years ago in Selma, Ala., there will be a program at 3 p.m. March 1 at the Tyler Historical Center, 325 W. Federal St., on the history of Selma and the grass-roots effort of local people to secure the right to vote.
Participants will then walk silently, two by two over the Frank Sinkwich Bridge, across the Mahoning River, ending at the B&O Station.
Fifty years ago, 600 marchers from Selma walked from Brown’s Chapel across the Edmond Pettus Bridge on their way to Montgomery, Ala., the capital of the state. They were walking for freedom and the right to register to vote. Led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams, they were met at the other side of the bridge by police officers who ordered them to turn around and go back to their homes or churches.
Before they could turn around or kneel to pray, state troopers and deputy sheriffs advanced on the marchers, beating them with clubs, running over them with their horses and shooting tear gas into the crowd. Lewis’ skull was fractured.
“I thought I was going to die,” he has said.
The march became known as “Bloody Sunday.”
The national outrage over the events at the Edmond Pettus Bridge led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in August 1965.
Sponsors of the March 1 event are the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, city of Youngstown and the Martin Luther King Jr. Planning Committee.