As part of their electioneering, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were in Selma today for the commemoration of Selma's Bloody Sunday. On Sunday March 7, 1965, around 600 civil rights marchers were attacked by Alabama state and local police with billy clubs and tear gas. The attack would ignite the civil rights movement in the south.
[the] civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. Highway 80. Discrimination and intimidation had prevented Selma's black population, roughly half of the city, from registering three weeks earlier ... a trooper (Corporal James Bonard Fowler) shot Jimmie Lee Jackson as he tried to protect his mother and grandfather in a café to which they had fled while being attacked by troopers during a civil rights demonstration. Jackson died ...
In their first march ... they made it only [six blocks] ... State troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff's Department, some mounted on horseback, awaited them. In the presence of the news media, the lawmen attacked the peaceful demonstrators with billy clubs, tear gas, and bull whips, driving them back into Selma.
Brutal televised images of the attack, which presented people with horrifying images of people left bloodied and severely injured, roused support for the US civil rights movement. (source Wikipedia)
Both Obama and HR Clinton gave a speech at a local church to commemorate the day. Both were decent speeches. Barack did the better job with his. Hillary sounded like an attorney giving a summation. I came away from both thinking that the day should have focused on history and not their ambitions.
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