On This Day – “Alabama Police Use Gas and Clubs to Rout Negroes”

On March 7, 1965, a march by civil rights demonstrators was broken up in Selma, Ala., by state troopers and a sheriff’s posse.

Alabama state troopers and volunteer officers of the Dallas County sheriff’s office tore through a column of Negro demonstrators with tear gas, nightsticks and whips to enforce Gov. George C. Wallace’s order against a protest march from Selma to Montgomery.

At least 17 Negroes were hospitalized with injuries and about 40 more were given emergency treatment for minor injuries and tear gas effects.

The Negroes reportedly fought back with bricks and bottles at one point as they were pushed back into the Negro community, far away from most of a squad of reporters and photographers who had been restrained by the officers.

[In Washington the Justice Department announced that agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in Selma had been directed to make a full and prompt investigation and to gather evidence whether “unnecessary force was used by law officers and others” in halting the march.]

Read the article in it’s entirety here: (Source)

On This Day – “High Court Rules Bus Segregation Unconstitutional”

On Nov. 13, 1956, the Supreme Court struck down laws calling for racial segregation on public buses.

“The Court affirmed a ruling by a three-judge Federal court that held the challenged statutes ‘violate the due process and equal protection clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.’

The Fourteenth Amendment provides that no state shall deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law nor deny to any citizen the equal protection of the laws.

[Officials of several Southern states indicated they would continue to enforce bus segregation laws despite the court’s decision. Segregationist leaders were bitter in their denunciations of the court and its ruling.]”

(Source)

On This Day – Martin Luther King Wins Nobel Prize For Peace

On Oct. 14, 1964, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was named winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

“The 35-year-old civil rights leader is the youngest winner of the prize that Dr. Alfred Nobel instituted since the first was awarded in 1901.

The prize honors acts ‘for the furtherance of brotherhood among men and to the abolishment or reduction of standing armies and for the extension of these purposes.’

Dr. King said that “every penny” of the prize money, which amounts to about $54,000, would be given to the civil rights movement.”

(Source)

On This Day – “Birmingham Bomb Kills 4 Negro Girls”

On Sept. 15, 1963, four black girls were killed when a bomb went off during Sunday services at a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, in the deadliest act of the civil rights era.

Parents of 3 of the Girls Are Teachers

Both parents of each of three of the victims teach in the city’s schools. The dead were identified by University Hospital officials as:

Cynthia Wesley, 14, the only child of Claude A. Wesley, principal of the Lewis Elementary School, and Mrs. Wesley, a teacher there.

Denise McNair, 11, also an only child, whose parents are teachers.

Carol Robertson, 14, whose parents are teachers and whose grandmother, Mrs. Sallie Anderson, is one of the Negro members of a biracial committee established by Mayor Boutwell to deal with racial problems.

Addie Mae Collins, 14, about whom no information was immediately available.

You can read the article in it’s entirety, as it was reported in 1963 by clicking on the following link: (Source)

“Freedom Riders” attacked on this day in 1961

On May 20, 1961, a mob of white persons attacked a racially mixed group of bus riders in Montgomery, Ala. The disorders lasted two hours. At least twenty of the riders were beaten, prompting the federal government to send in United States marshals to restore order.

Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy announced the Federal action in a telegram to Alabama officials. He said it was necessary to “guarantee safe passage in interstate commerce.”

Mr. Kennedy disclosed also that he would ask the Federal Court in Montgomery “to enjoin the Ku Klux Klan, the National States Rights Party, certain individuals and all persons acting in concert with them from interfering with peaceful interstate travel by buses.”

(Source)