Both the building and the members of Brown Chapel AME Church played pivotal roles in the Selma, Alabama, marches that helped lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The starting point for the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, Brown Chapel also hosted the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) for the first three months of 1965.
This church in Montgomery, Alabama was the backbone of the 1955-1956 Montgomery bus boycott--the first locally-initiated mass protest against racial discrimination and a "model" for other grass-roots demonstrations. The boycott proved how members of a black community could unite in resistance to segregation, and it heralded a new era of "direct action."
First Baptist Church, along with its close neighbor, Brown Chapel AME Church, played a pivotal role in the Selma, Alabama, marches that helped lead to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
On August 6, 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which extended equal voting rights for African-Americans. As both White and Black non-violent supporters led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. fought for the right to vote in Central Alabama, today, you can trace their march toward freedom on the 54-mile trail and connect with their stories at the Interpretive Centers.
The Selma-to-Montgomery March for voting rights ended three weeks--and three events--that represented the political and emotional peak of the modern civil rights movement. On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma, Alabama on U.S. Route 80.
Thanks to a courageous and insightful federal judge--Frank M. Johnson, Jr.--this Montgomery, Alabama, courthouse became one of few official buildings in the South where civil rights claims could receive an impartial hearing and be won.
Founded during the mid-1930s by Catholic priest Father Harold Purcell when segregation was the norm in the Southeast, the City of St. Jude Hospital in Montgomery, Alabama pioneered nondiscriminatory health, education, and social services.
The march from Selma to Montgomery lasted 5 days, 4 nights. The third night, March 23, 1965, several hundred people camped on the farm of Mr. Robert Gardner.
The march from Selma to Montgomery lasted 5 days, 4 nights. The second night, March 22, 1965, several hundred people camped on the property of Ms. Rosie Steele.
