🚨Civil Rights Marchers Attacked in Selma

Mar. 7, 1965 - Alabama state troopers and mounted deputies, charging behind a barrage of tear gas, attacked 600 Negro marchers with clubs today and drove them bleeding and screaming through the streets of Selma, Ala.

Troopers and possemen, under orders from Gov. George Wallace to stop the Negro “walk for freedom” to Montgomery, attacked the Negroes as they knelt to pray on a bridge at the edge of the business district. Deputies on horseback chased the choking, bloody Negroes nearly a mile, clubbing them as they ran. At least 67 persons were wounded and scores left gasping by the tear gas, including John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee.

Good Samaritan Hospital and Burwell Infirmary said 17 Negroes had been hospitalized for injuries ranging from a skull fracture and broken arms and legs to hysteria. A spokesman for the treatment centers said another 50 Negroes were treated and released.

Dr. Martin Luther King, persuaded by his aides not to lead the ill-fated march, announced in Atlanta that he would lead a “renewed” march from Selma to Montgomery on Tuesday “in spite of the dangers.” An aide to Dr. King, the Rev. Andrew Young, said Negroes would go before a Federal judge in Montgomery tomorrow and try to get an injunction prohibiting interference against future marches. 

In Washington tonight, the Justice Department said the FBI was interviewing the battered marchers “to gather evidence that might indicate use of unnecessary force by local law enforcement officers and others.”

All of Selma’s doctors were called to Good Samaritan Hospital. One white physician said the place looked as though there had been a “moderate disaster.” Lewis, at the head of the column when the troopers waded in, had a skull fracture. 

Some of the wounded were trampled by horses. Several witnesses said they saw the possemen use bullwhips and lengths of rope to flog the fleeing Negroes. Crowds of whites stood along the streets, cheering on the troopers until the gas drifted among them and drove them away.

In Montgomery, Wallace would only say that “those folks in Selma have made this a seven-day-a-week job” — an apparent reference to the fact that he was in his office — “but we can’t give in one inch. We’re going to have to enforce state laws.”

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