‘You want it to outlive you’: an often-overlooked piece of civil rights history

‘As Ruby Sales says in the film, Black power is a threat to white supremacy and to the white economic system everywhere’ … an image used in Lowndes County and the Road to Black Power. Photograph: Greenwich Entertainment

Martin Luther King Jr and his march from Selma to Montgomery is familiar to anyone with a glancing awareness of the civil rights movement. But on his way he went through Lowndes county, an often-overlooked hostile territory where a profoundly influential movement for equal rights was born.

With impassioned talking head testimonials and a staggering treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage, documentary Lowndes County And The Road To Black Power covers the 80% Black population in one of the poorest counties in the US who rallied to register their vote and be heard despite the constant and immediate threat of white supremacist violence. Lowndes is where the college kids who made up the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (Sncc, pronounced snick) went to support the local community and help create the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). Their focus was to get Black people elected into positions of power and effect change. Because such practical and immediate goals were a threat to white power, these targeted activists had to arm themselves while moving through an area dubbed Bloody Lowndes.