On This Day In Alabama History: Demonstrators Crossed The Edmund Pettus Bridge
By Graydon Rust
Alabama 200
March 21, 1965
About 8,000 demonstrators marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the beginning of the final Selma to Montgomery march. Protesting for black voting rights, the activists crossed the bridge four days after U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. ruled that the state could not interfere with the march as it had on Bloody Sunday and Turnaround Tuesday. The protest culminated on March 25 with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his “How Long? Not Long!” speech from the Capitol steps to a crowd of 25,000. In 1996, Congress designated the Selma to Montgomery National Voting Rights Trail a National Historic Trail.
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