March in Youngstown remembers Bloody Sunday

YOUNGSTOWN

In March of 1965, it took them three tries.

Three tries before they would leave Selma, Ala., cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge and reach Montgomery, Ala., the state’s capital, 54 miles away.

Black activists in the Dallas County Voters League and those who had come to help them were trying to bring attention to their cause — they wanted to be able to vote.

Between March 7 and 25 that year though, the 54 miles to Montgomery were hard fought.

Mahoning Valley Sojurn to the Past, which takes high-school students on a 10-day journey to civil rights sites, commemorated the first of the three Selma marches Sunday with a march of its own.

March 7, 1965, has gone down in American history one of its darkest days, a day that horrified the rest of the country as it broke on TV news.

Six hundred marchers crested the Edmund Pettus Bridge, only to find themselves facing a sea of state troopers and sheriff’s deputies.

They were told to turn around and go back. But before they could get very far, they were attacked with clubs, hoses and tear gas. They were trampled by police on horses.

Sojurn to the Past, along with the Mahoning Valley Historical Society, the city of Youngstown and the MLK Planning Committee, sponsored a presentation at Tyler Historical Center Sunday on what came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

Sojurn students recited the story of what led up to the one of the most infamous, but also one of the most galvanizing events in U.S. history.

Read the full story Monday in The Vindicator and on Vindy.com