Home
   About Dan
   AMIT TV
   AMIT Live!
   Today's AMIT
   10 Min Guide
   Podcasts/RSS
   Transcripts
   Station List
   News
   Meet the Staff
   AMIT Store
   Take Our Survey
   FAQs
   Contact Us
   Support
   Press Coverage


   Members Area
   Login
   Not A    Member?

 

Sign up to receive your daily A Moment In Time!
Just click on "Not a Member?" in the menu bar to your left to become a member.

Today's A Moment In Time
.

5-008 Selma, Alabama, 1965 III

Lead: In 1965 the town of Selma, Alabama was the scene of protests and brutal repression. The results: A march to Montgomery and a new voting rights bill.

Intro.: A Moment in Time with Dan Roberts.

Content: Martin Luther King, Jr. was convinced that the greatest ally the civil rights movement had lay in the consciences of white people. For too long the white majority had made gestures, had thrown rhetoric in support of liberty and justice, but had acquiesced in the face of bigotry and ideas of
white sovereignty. King knew that a frontal assault by blacks on the high wall of institutional prejudice would not succeed. Nonviolent tactics were designed to inflame those white consciences.

After several weeks of protests in the winter of 1965, intended to provoke a brutal white reaction, King had focused the nation's attention on Selma, Alabama and the town's suppression of Negro voting rights. On Bloody Sunday, March 7th, nearly a hundred protesters were run down by club-wielding state troopers and a mounted posse. Horrified by the continued intransigence of
the whites led by Governor George Wallace, President Johnson personally brought a voting rights bill to the floor of Congress, closing his message with the words of the protest song, "we shall overcome."

With the way cleared by federal injunctions and protected by nationalized troops from the Alabama National Guard, on March 21st more than 3,000 marchers began the trek eastward to Montgomery where King spoke in front of the state capital to the largest civil rights rally in southern history. Governor Wallace peered through the blinds of his office at the crowd below--25,000 strong. The result of the Selma demonstrations was that, under federal pressure, the states of the Deep South were forced to include thousands of African Americans in the rites of civil life; politics in the south were never again the same.

At the University of Richmond, this is Dan Roberts.

Copyright 2009 by Broadcast Partners, LLC

Resources

Bishop, Jim. The Days of Martin Luther King, Jr. New York,
Putnam Publishing Company, 1971.

Garrow, David. J. "The Voting Rights Act in Historical
Perspective," Georgia Historical Quarterly 1990 74 (3): 377-398.

King, Coretta Scott. My Life With Martin Luther King, Jr. New
York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.

Oates, Stephen B. Let the Trumpet Sound: The Life of Martin
Luther King, Jr. New York: Harper and Row, 1982

Oates, Stephen B. "The Week the World Watched Selma," American
Heritage 1982 33(4): 48-63.

About A Moment in Time and Why We Are Committed to Bringing History to Life

In spring 2000 The Wall Street Journal reported that a survey of senior class students at the 55 best universities in the United States revealed that a large percentage could score no higher than a D- on a high school history test and that while 78% of these young scholars knew the identity of Bevis and Butthead, only 33% knew that George Washington was at Yorktown. These are the people who are about to inherit our nation's mantle of leadership. These are the people who are going to formulate policies that govern our lives…a scary thought.

Ten years ago, University of Richmond History Professor Dan Roberts decided to try and do something about this growing epidemic of ignorance about the past. In response, he developed the syndicated radio show, A Moment in Time, a brief, exciting and compelling journey into the past. Episodes play weekdays on over 140 public and commercial radio stations, XM and Sirius Satellite Radio, Voice of America, and the Armed Forces Radio Network around the world. Since 1999, the University of Richmond has become a partner in this enterprise. We have earned an audience of over 2 million listeners daily. In addition, we have established this full-service Web site to provide historical resources for listeners, students, and teachers.




Copyright 2004 Broadcast Partners, LLC
Broadcast Partners, LLC is a media partnership of the University of Richmond and Dan Roberts