MARION, Ala. (AP) — As the 55th anniversary of the civil rights clash known as Bloody Sunday approaches, townspeople in Alabama want to remind the world that the road to Selma began in a place called Marion.
In 1965, in what has become a footnote to history, a young black man by the name of Jimmie Lee Jackson was fatally shot at a protest in Marion. It was that killing that sent hundreds of people to Selma for a march at the Edmund Pettus Bridge two weeks later.
The Selma marchers were attacked by police with clubs and tear gas in an episode so shocking that it helped spur passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.