Montgomery March Research Paper

On a cold Sunday on the seventh of March in 1965 about 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma to Montgomery on U.S. Route 80 for the fight to be able to vote. These people that were traveling to Montgomery are called “foot soldiers”. These black and white men and women were fighting for the rights of black civilians for all of the right reasons, but the rest of the community did not want these men and women protesting. This is the story of the famous “foot soldiers”. The “foot soldiers” were mostly African Americans that traveled to Montgomery from Selma, Alabama to fight for their voting rights. There was one man in particular that is a great figure for this movement, an 85-year-old civil rights activist, a “foot soldier”, and a World War ii veteran, James Armstrong. James was the proud proprietor of Armstrong’s Barbershop, a cultural and political hub in Birmingham, Alabama for more than 50 years. During the walk from Selma to Montgomery James carried an American flag across the Edmund Pettus Bridge during to Bloody Sunday march for voting rights in 1965. When the first Bloody Sunday began on March 7, …show more content…
These brave men and women put their lives on the line to get their word out there that they deserved the right to vote and when they spoke they got shot down and beaten. After the blacks got their “right” to vote things were still not changed and after all these men and women went through from getting hit with billy clubs, sprayed with tear gas, beaten, shot at, and even some getting killed there was really no hope for these African Americans. But to have the courage knowing what might happen to them on that first Bloody Sunday these “foot soldiers” are still remembered today by an annual walk from Selma to Montgomery to remember what these men and women went through so that all blacks could have the right to vote