Alabama has long been considered the birthplace of the voting rights movement in America.
During a peaceful voting rights demonstration in 1965, an Alabama state trooper shot and killed church deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson. In response, about 600 marchers set out from Selma, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, toward the state capitol building in Montgomery to demand the right to vote. What met them on the other side – state troopers on horseback, billy clubs, teargas and a sheriff’s posse – was broadcast that evening on national television.
