Word: selma
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...audience who might not have been around in 1964. Lehrer has changed a few of the more duted lyrics, but purists won't appreciate the minor improvement. One noted exception lies in the "National Brotherhood Week" refrain: Instead of having "Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark of Selma, Alabama, dancing cheek to cheek," he has the equally improbable duo of Rep. Gerry Studds (D-Mass) and Jerry Falwell taking up the pose...
Ignoring an order from Governor Wallace forbidding the march, 650 Negroes and a few whites filed through the back streets of Selma, and headed for the Edmund Pettus Bridge, which crosses the Alabama River...
...Selma seemed a natural target to Martin Luther King. He rounded up hundreds of Negroes at a time, led them on marches to the county courthouse to register to vote. Always, Clark awaited them, either turning them away or arresting them for contempt of court, truancy, juvenile delinquency and parading without a permit. In seven weeks, Clark jailed no fewer than 2,000 men, women and children, including King, who dramatized the situation by refusing to make bond for four days. Still the Negroes came, singing "We shall overcome." In reply, Sheriff Clark pinned a button on his shirt reading...
King called for a march from Selma to the state capitol at Montgomery, 50 miles away. King planned to lead the march himself, but at the last minute was persuaded by aides to stay at his Atlanta headquarters for his safety's sake...
...protest parade of 10,000 people. President Johnson publicly declared that he "deplored the brutality." And in Atlanta, Martin Luther King announced that as a "matter of conscience and in an attempt to arouse the deepest concern of the nation," he was "compelled" to lead another march from Selma to Montgomery...