Race and Civil Rights

Podcast

Bloody Sunday in Selma: Moments of Crisis

Ep. 201715
75 minute listen

Why did a peaceful protest in Selma erupt into violent attack on American citizens by state power?

Saturday, 3 March 2018’s TAH.org teacher webinar was about Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama. The violent response to a peaceful Civil Rights march on 7 March 1965, televised and immortalized in pictures, helped to spotlight the injustice of segregation and racially discriminatory systems of law and social norms found throughout the South at the time. Although other crises in this series were political or security-focused in nature, what happened in Selma has a far more distinctly moral crisis, as it was made so clear that many Americans were not enjoying the same rights as others, and that the promises of the Declaration of Independence were, clearly, not yet fulfilled. The event itself was discussed in detail and contextualized alongside other major moments and ideas from the Civil Rights movement in the early 1960s. Suggestions for additional reading:

Next up