Although the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination against African-Americans, registering black voters in southern states, including Alabama, posed many hurdles. It was then when the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) asked Martin Luther King Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) to help publicize the issue.
On March 21, 1965, after two failed attempts, some 2,000 people marched from Selma to the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery, escorted by US Army and State National Guard forces. Later that year, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act, prohibiting states from mandating “voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure ... to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.”
