Rev. Al Sharpton, Founder of National Action Network, is preparing to lead a march from Selma, to Montgomery, Alabama re enacting the march by Dr. Martin Luther King and other civil rights leaders to commemorate “Bloody Sunday” and a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The march is scheduled for Sunday, March 4 in Selma and will end in Montgomery, Alabama, on Friday, March 9, with a rally at the state capital.
On Thursday, February 23, Rev. Sharpton will be joined by Dr. Gerald L. Durley, Pastor of Providence Missionary Baptist Church, Marcus Coleman, Founder, Atlanta Chapter-National Action Network, Members of the Atlanta Chapter of NAN, Clergy, Union Leaders, elected Officials and Community Organizers, will also be at a rally to support the March.
The rally will take place at Providence Missionary Baptist Church, 2295 Benjamin E. Mays Drive in Atlanta beginning at 6 pm.
100 buses will depart from the Atlanta area to participate in this historic event on March 4. Buses will also depart on March 9th for Montgomery and return the same day. Tickets may be purchased for $30.
For more information please contact the Southeastern Regional Office at 678-732-0405 or log onto http://www.nationalactionnetwork.net
History of Bloody Sunday: The Selma to Montgomery marches were three marches in 1965 that marked the political and emotional peak of the American civil rights movement. They grew out of the voting rights movement in Selma, Alabama, launched by local African-Americans who formed the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL). In 1963, the DCVL and organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) began voter-registration work. When white resistance to Black voter registration proved intractable, the DCVL requested the assistance of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who brought many prominent civil rights and civic leaders to support voting rights.
The first march took place on March 7, 1965 — “Bloody Sunday” — when 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. The second march, the following Tuesday, resulted in 2,500 protesters turning around after crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
The third march started March 16. The marchers averaged 10 miles (16 km) a day along U.S. Route 80, known in Alabama as the “Jefferson Davis Highway”. Protected by 2,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army, 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under Federal command, and many FBI agents and Federal Marshals, they arrived in Montgomery on March 24, and at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25.[1] The route is memorialized as the Selma To Montgomery Voting Rights Trail, a U.S. National Historic Trail.
