For all involved, danger was ever-present. The march, which covered 54 miles and took five days, from March 21 to 25, had been preceded by two traumatic aborted versions. On March 7, 600 people trying to walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge over the Alabama River leading out of Selma to Montgomery were accused by local law officials of gathering illegally and were savagely assaulted by state troopers.
Sunday, March 7, 1965. The march is shown in the first 3:33 of this video.
Tuesday, March 9, 1965.
Two days later, a second group, this one led by Dr. King, approached the bridge, knelt to pray and turned back. If the retreat was intended as a symbolic rebuke to violence, it did no good. That night, a Unitarian minister from Boston* named James J. Reeb, in town for the event, was beaten on the street by a group of Selma racists and died.(*I'm sure the New York Times will print a correction. Perhaps Holland Carter can't imagine an advocate for racial justice traveling from Wyoming to Alabama in 1965.)
March 21-25, 1965.
By the time of the third march, certain protective measures were in place. The force of public opinion was one. Pictures of the attack at the bridge had been widely seen in print and on national television: All eyes were on Selma now.
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