MLK Leads March into Montgomery

Mar. 24, 1965 - Dr. Martin Luther King led a triumphal Freedom March into Montgomery, Ala., this afternoon. The marchers stopped for the night 1.7 miles inside the city and prepared for the last leg of their historic Selma-to-Montgomery march, a 3½-mile walk to the state Capitol tomorrow.

The marchers were joined tonight by thousands of other Negroes and white sympathizers. A crowd estimated at more than 10,000 gathered for a mass meeting and a show by leading entertainers.

Governor George Wallace went on television tonight with another appeal to Alabamians to stay away from the march and avoid causing violence.

He said the Federal Government’s protection of the marchers would cost taxpayers “at least $1 million.”

The marchers passed the 50-mile mark when they marched into Montgomery early this afternoon. It is 54 miles from Browns Chapel Methodist Church, where the march originated, to the state Capitol. They covered 16 miles today, all but the last few under sunny skies. 

The march left A.G. Gaston’s muddy pasture, last night’s campsite in eastern Lowndes County, at 7:07 a.m.

The 300 who had made the walk through most of desolate Lowndes County, where the highway is only two lanes wide and the size of the group was limited by court order, were joined early today by 150 others from Selma, Montgomery, and other places.

The marchers numbered at least 1,000 by the time they reached the Montgomery city limits. 

Len Chandler (second from left, front row), a Negro folksinger from New York, stepped in front of three flags — two American, one United Nations — and played a fast version of “Yankee Doodle” on a fife. Beside him walked Jim Letherer (second from right), the one-legged white marcher from Saginaw, Mich., who has made the entire journey on crutches.

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