It took a bloody civil war and military occupation of the South to free African-Americans from slavery. It took the 15th Amendment to the Constitution to guarantee them the right to vote. Nevertheless almost a century after the passing of that amendment, large swaths of the South kept African-Americans segregated and disenfranchised by means of targeted laws, intimidation, and outright physical violence. One of the most famous examples came from Selma, Alabama.

On this day, March 7, in 1965, a column of six hundred African-American protesters on a peaceful demonstration to the state capitol, Montgomery, six hundred miles away, were met and attacked by a heavily armed contingent of state troopers – in full view of the journalists present.

Recounts of the “Bloody Sunday” event was one of the tipping points towards the eradication of Jim Crow laws. Martin Luther King flew down to Selma to lend his imprimatur to the demonstrations, and senators in Congress cited the attacks as a reprehensible legacy of the racist past. King led a march just two days later to the same bridge, this time without incident and then turned around. Two weeks after the incident, he started the famous march from Selma to Birmingham.