Selma, Alabama

Selma is a city in the Alabama Black Belt (so-called because of the predominant color of the soil as well as the majority of the population being Black).

It is an important city in the history of the American Civil Rights Movement: on March 7, 1965, a planned march to Montgomery (the state capital) was interrupted by state and local "law enforcement" (the county sheriff had ordered all White men in the city to appear at the county courthouse to be deputized) in a violent attack known as Bloody Sunday. (A later march to Montgomery, allowed by a Federal judge - one of the few in the South sympathetic to the Civil Rights movement - took place, though it too was marred by at least one assassination.) The National Voting Rights Museum is located in the city, in honor of its importance in giving all races the right to vote.