15-02-2025
Horrors and hope: Awareness of Selma brutality led to voting rights laws 60 years ago
JOHNSTOWN, Pa. – As a teen raised in the Rust Belt in the 1960s, Alan Cashaw wasn't blind to the fact that racism existed.
But he also knew freedom in Johnstown.
'There was never a question over whether I could vote when I turned 18. My mom even worked at the election polls,' Cashaw said. 'Even then, there was never a place in Johnstown where I couldn't walk in and order something to eat. I wasn't being turned away at the lunch counter at Woolworth's.'
That's one reason he was filled with shock and heartache in 1965 as televised images showed Black men and women being denied the same rights – and assaulted on 'Bloody Sunday' in the Deep South.
'I'd come home from school ... and watch Walter Cronkite on my TV and see stories about people being attacked ... see children have high-powered water hoses turned on them,' he said.
And 60 years ago this week, much of that attention focused on Selma, Alabama.
Cashaw was among millions watching when news broke that a man named Jimmy Lee Jackson was fatally beaten by an Alabama Highway Patrol officer during a voting rights demonstration Feb. 18, 1965.
Just weeks later, on March 7, 1965, a crowd of 600 was attacked with tear gas and billy clubs.
It became known as 'Bloody Sunday.'
But millions across the nation also watched as Selma's Black community persevered, responding to the violence with a peaceful, songful march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, to usher in change.
'Local' issue
Today, 'Selma' is remembered as a watershed moment for civil rights – and a national event that drew some of the movement's biggest names of the era.
It didn't start out that way, said Samuel Black, the director of African American Programs at the Sen. John Heinz History Center in Pittsburgh.
'It started with the people in the small town of Selma,' Black said. 'The whole movement started as a local demonstration – as most do.'
In this case, most of Selma's 23,000 residents were Black, he said. But their rights to vote were being denied in large numbers by local leaders within a state operating under the heavy hand of then-Gov. George Wallace.
'When they started (protesting), they weren't intending to march anywhere – there was no plan to go to Montgomery,' Black said.
It started as an effort by Selma residents, including members of the Dexter Avenue Memorial Church and Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, to raise awareness through signs and small public demonstrations, he said.
But the mass arrests and brutal attacks they faced only raised more awareness about the Jim Crow-era edicts that still prevailed in Alabama.
'A lot of people in the South ... it was all they knew,' said Cashaw, whose father moved to Johnstown from a segregated Georgia in 1938.
'Rights were being violated'
The Selma to Montgomery march was organized in the aftermath of the landmark passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which outlawed discrimination by race.
But as history often shows, laws are only effective if they are enforced, Black said.
And in states such as Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, the people in power were doing whatever it took to keep Black people from being able to cast ballots.
Under Wallace, staunch opposition efforts often derailed voter registration drives – in doing so, limiting Black registration to 2% statewide, figures show.
'People like Amelia Boynton (Robinson) recognized their constitutional rights were being violated,' Black said. 'Their ability to move up in society – whether it meant running for local office or obtaining a job for the city or the county – voting was key to it.'
The group started with neighborhood demonstrations and organized voter registration drives in January 1965.
After one Southern Christian Leadership Conference member was jailed for his voter registration work, a group of 600 protesters planned a walk from a local church to the county jail Feb. 18, 1965.
But they were met by a wall of state law enforcement officers and Marion County police, who attacked the group and chased them from the scene, reports at the time show.
One activist, a local church leader named Jimmie Lee Jackson, was shot and beaten and died at a hospital a week later.
'Nowhere to hide'When a smaller group – an estimated 300 people – drew up the courage to protest Jackson's attack in a March 7 demonstration, they were met by Alabama Highway Patrol officers and a vigilante band on horseback, according to National Park Service accounts.
State lawmen ordered the group to disperse.
Then they fired gas canisters and attacked them with clubs – with Boynton Robinson among those attacked, records show.
Because this was a small town, there was nowhere to hide, Black said.
Some were followed back to their homes or neighborhood and assaulted, he said.
'In small-town America, everyone knows where everyone else lives,' Black said. 'The people of Selma were standing up for themselves ... even though they had nowhere to hide.'
'Broadcast' peaceOrganizers quickly decided they needed to turn to outside support.
Some of the nation's most prominent civil rights leaders responded, including the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
Some of the era's biggest stars – including singer Harry Belafonte, Sammy Davis Jr. and Tony Bennett – joined the effort. Belafonte and others took turns leading the march in song.
'It was very strategic,' said Black, noting that the most prominent marchers were placed out front to protect fellow marchers.
'They understood you couldn't respond with violence. They wanted to respond to the conscience of America – and the best way to do that was to broadcast it for everyone to see,' he said.
Across the nation, Americans watched as the group sang hymns and freedom songs along the nearly 55-mile march to Montgomery.
Campsites were arranged to allow people to rest each night.
Vehicles traveled along the route to provide temporary refuge from the sun and rain.
TV cameras followed every groundbreaking step, Black said.
'The whole point was to invite the nation in to see what an effort it took just to get voting rights in Alabama,' Cashaw said. 'Through peace, it shined a light on the brutality they were facing.'
This time, the group completed the journey.
By March 25, the group arrived at Montgomery – delivering a call for change to Wallace's doorstep.
'By the time Dr. King delivered his speech, 'How Long, Not Long,' there was a crowd of 25,000 people,' Cashaw said. 'It was being (broadcast) to everyone's TV sets.'
Laws 'protect us all'That August, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the 1965 Voting Rights Act into law, which expressly banned voter discrimination by race – and expanded protections by banning literacy tests and other methods previously used to limit voting.
Johnson signed the law in the same room President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation 100 years earlier.
Voter registration numbers surged across the south among Blacks, more than doubling in Alabama from 1964 to 1966.
Selma residents ousted the county's segregationist sheriff at the ballot box soon after. Voters elected five Black residents to city council by 1972, newspaper archives show.
'The people of Selma deserve more credit,' Black said, 'for turning a local issue into a national movement.'
Cashaw noted the Voting Rights Act – which he said still finds itself under attack today – is among a list of Civil Rights laws that benefit Americans of every age, color and creed.
'It wasn't just where people could go to school or allowing everyone the (same) right to vote,' Cashaw said.
'During that period, equal employment rights rose up from that. You can't be denied a job because you are pregnant. Or with housing, your landlord can't refuse to provide access to water ... no matter what you look like,' he added.
'These laws protect everyone from discrimination,' he said. 'They protect us all.'
