1965
LBJ sends federal
troops to Alabama
On
this day in 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson notifies Alabama’s Governor
George Wallace that he will use federal authority to call up the Alabama
National Guard in order to supervise a planned civil rights march from Selma to
Montgomery.
Intimidation
and discrimination had earlier prevented Selma’s black population–over half the
city–from registering and voting. On Sunday, March 7, 1965, a group of 600
demonstrators marched on the capital city of Montgomery to protest this
disenfranchisement and the earlier killing of a black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson,
by a state trooper. In brutal scenes that were later broadcast on television,
state and local police attacked the marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. TV
viewers far and wide were outraged by the images, and a protest march was
organized just two days after “Bloody Sunday” by Martin Luther King, Jr., head
of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). King turned the
marchers around, however, rather than carry out the march without federal
judicial approval.
After
an Alabama federal judge ruled on March 18 that a third march could go ahead,
President Johnson and his advisers worked quickly to find a way to ensure the
safety of King and his demonstrators on their way from Selma to Montgomery. The
most powerful obstacle in their way was Governor Wallace, an outspoken
anti-integrationist who was reluctant to spend any state funds on protecting
the demonstrators. Hours after promising Johnson–in telephone calls recorded by
the White House–that he would call out the Alabama National Guard to maintain
order, Wallace went on television and demanded that Johnson send in federal
troops instead.
Furious,
Johnson told Attorney General Nicholas Katzenbach to write a press release
stating that because Wallace refused to use the 10,000 available guardsmen to
preserve order in his state, Johnson himself was calling the guard up and
giving them all necessary support. Several days later, 50,000 marchers followed
King some 54 miles, under the watchful eyes of state and federal troops.
Arriving safely in Montgomery on March 25, they watched King deliver his famous
“How Long, Not Long” speech from the steps of the Capitol building. The clash
between Johnson and Wallace–and Johnson’s decisive action–was an important
turning point in the civil rights movement. Within five months, Congress had
passed the Voting Rights Act, which Johnson proudly signed into law on August
6, 1965.