Second Selma March

The second Selma march is led by King and consists of roughly 2,000 marchers, including hundreds of clergymen who came from around the nation. They go to the Pettus Bridge, site of the Bloody Sunday beatings, where once again state troopers are waiting. The marchers sing “We Shall Overcome,” kneel and pray, and then, in compliance with a federal injunction, turn back. King’s decision to make the march symbolic is criticized by more militant civil-rights activists who were prepared for confrontation. That night, one of the clergymen who had come to Selma to march, James J. Reeb of Boston, a white Unitarian minister, is brutally beaten by local white segregationists. He dies two days later.