National

5 Things About the 50th Anniversary of the Selma Marches

Published

12 years ago

March 7, 2015

In this March 1965 file photo, Martin Luther King, center, leads a march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. In early 1965, King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference began a series of marches as part of a push for black voting rights. (AP Photo/File)

JESSE J. HOLLAND, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” a civil rights march in which protesters were beaten, trampled and tear-gassed by police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. On March 7, 1965, marchers were walking from Selma to the state capital, Montgomery, to demand an end to discriminatory practices that robbed blacks of their right to vote. It took two more attempts for marchers to successfully complete their journey. Images of the violence during the first march shocked the nation and turned up the pressure to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which helped open voter rolls to millions of Southern blacks.

Five things to know about Bloody Sunday:

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SELMA TO MONTGOMERY

The march was conceived by James Bevel, one of Martin Luther King Jr.’s aides. After a 26-year-old black church deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson, was fatally shot by a state trooper during an earlier march in Marion, Alabama, Bevel suggested that protesters carry Jackson’s casket from Marion to the steps of the state capitol. A protest march was planned instead, and the starting point changed to Selma. That march ended in the Bloody Sunday beatings.

Afterward, King issued a call for volunteers and ministers to come to Selma for a second march. However, federal judge Frank M. Johnson had forbidden marches pending his ruling on a petition to shield marchers from police interference. To heed the judge’s order, King led protesters two days later, on Tuesday, March 9, 1965, to the Pettus bridge, where they kneeled, prayed, sang and left. King’s refusal to take the march across the bridge, where Alabama lawmen were waiting, led critics to call the second march “Turnaround Tuesday.”

Johnson ordered federal protection for the marchers, and on March 21, 1965, thousands of marchers made the 50-mile journey to Montgomery. Two other people were also killed during these protests: James Reeb, a white Unitarian minister who was beaten to death by local whites on March 11 and Viola Liuzzo, a white Michigan woman who was fatally shot by the Ku Klux Klan on March 25.

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WHERE WAS KING?

Martin Luther King Jr. was not in Selma for the Bloody Sunday march, although he had been there before working on voting rights issues, even doing a stint in jail there. King was obliged to preach at his church in Atlanta on the day people showed up to march to Montgomery, since it was their “Men’s Day” program, former King aide Andrew Young said. Young said they heard that people were showing up to march and so he immediately headed to Selma.

He and other King aides then telephoned Atlanta to convince King not to call it off.

“We persuaded him that since there were about three hundred people there, maybe they could go ahead and march, that they weren’t going to get far, anyway,” Young said in interviews for the documentary “Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years (1954-1965).” ”That we had seen the state troopers and they were going to probably stop them and turn them around, or maybe they would, people would get arrested.

“So he said, ‘Well, OK, go ahead and march,’ he said, ‘but don’t you all go to jail,'” Young said.

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SHERIFF WITH NO REGRETS

One of the most polarizing figures of the Selma movement was Dallas County Sheriff Jim Clark, who’d already had several confrontations with protesters before the Bloody Sunday beatings. In fact, Clark insisted that the protesters who knelt down to pray before the state troopers attacked had actually provoked the police first. “The marchers fell to the ground and as the troopers moved on to them, that was when they attacked the troopers with ice picks, and straight razors, and knives, and even broken glass,” Clark told interviewers for the same “Eyes on the Prize” documentary. “And that was when they used tear gas on them and they started retreating across the bridge at that time.”

Clark lost his next election in 1966. He ended up selling mobile homes and once was sentenced to prison for conspiring to smuggle marijuana. He died in 2007.

In a 2006 interview, Clark told the Montgomery Advertiser that he did not regret his actions in Selma. “Basically, I’d do the same thing today if I had to do it all over again,” Clark said. “I did what I thought was right to uphold the law.”

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MALCOLM X

Malcolm X had visited Selma in the weeks leading up to Bloody Sunday to support the voting rights movement there. By the time he arrived, King was in a Selma jail for protesting voting discrimination in the South. The two had first met the year before on Capitol Hill during Senate debate of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Malcolm X shared the podium with King’s wife, Coretta Scott King, at Brown Chapel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and Mrs. King told “Eyes on the Prize” interviewers that Malcolm X said he had changed his mind about visiting King in jail, and asked her to pass along a message.

“I didn’t come to Selma to make his job more difficult, but I thought that if the white people understood what the alternative was that they would be more inclined to listen to your husband,” she said he told her.

Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965, in New York City, roughly two weeks before Bloody Sunday.

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CONGRESSIONAL GOLD MEDAL

Congress on Tuesday authorized the awarding of the Congressional Gold Medal to the marchers who participated in all three Selma-to-Montgomery marches. “This nation should never forget the sacrifices those who refused to accept second-class citizenship and demanded that our nation live up to the very ideals on which it was founded.” said Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala.

The Congressional Gold Medal is Congress’s highest honor.

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Asm. Corey Jackson Announces Launch of 24-Hour Childcare in His District

Assemblymember Corey Jackson has secured $2 million in state funding for a proposed childcare special district in Moreno Valley and Perris. This funding aims to establish a system providing 24-hour, seven-day-a-week childcare, which would be California’s first special district focused solely on childcare. The initiative seeks to address the area’s designation as a “childcare desert” and high costs for working families. The funding will cover startup, planning, and formation costs for the district. Read more about the specifics of this groundbreaking initiative.

Published

3 days ago

September 28, 2026

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Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D-Moreno Valley). File photo.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Assemblymember Corey Jackson (D-Moreno Valley) has secured $2 million in state funding to launch a proposed childcare special district serving families in Moreno Valley and Perris, paving the way for a system designed to provide childcare 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Moreno Valley-Perris Childcare Special District would be the first special district in California focused specifically on childcare, according to Jackson’s office. The state funding will cover startup, planning, and formation costs and help the district meet requirements set by the Riverside Local Agency Formation Commission, or LAFCO.

The proposed district would coordinate a mixed-delivery childcare system that could include home-based and center-based care. The goal is to provide universal childcare for families who work overnight, early morning, or other nontraditional shifts.

Jackson’s office says Moreno Valley is a certified “childcare desert,” with licensed childcare spaces available for only 15% of children with working parents. Infant care in Moreno Valley averages $2,776 a month, or about 35.7% of median household income. In Perris, licensed infant care can cost more than 60% of an individual worker’s gross median earnings, according to the assemblymember’s office.

“Securing this $2 million in startup funding is a monumental victory for the working-class families of Moreno Valley and Perris who have been trapped in a childcare desert for far too long,” Jackson said.

The proposal follows Jackson’s unsuccessful effort to establish the district through Assembly Bill 2083. The legislation would have created the district as a dependent special district covering Moreno Valley, Perris and their spheres of influence, with Riverside LAFCO responsible for reviewing its formation and boundaries.

The new funding allows the district’s formation to move forward without requiring mandatory contributions from local school districts and other stakeholders, according to Jackson’s office. His spokesperson, Daniel Peeden, said Jackson hopes the district can be operating by 2028.

The proposal has faced questions from some local officials. Moreno Valley City Councilmember Ed Delgado, who is running against Jackson for the 60th Assembly District seat, said he supports affordable childcare but questioned how the proposed district would operate and how much it would ultimately cost.

“Basically, he didn’t have a plan. We didn’t see a plan,” Delgado said, adding that officials had questions about operating costs, insurance and eligibility.

“It’s going to take a lot more than $2 million to create a special district to provide affordable childcare,” Delgado said.

Delgado has suggested working with existing childcare centers to subsidize costs for local families rather than creating a new agency.

Jackson’s office says the program will lower barriers to “workforce participation” and reduce “affordability anxiety” for young families. This landmark District is poised to trigger a virtuous cycle of economic upward mobility and long-term regional prosperity in the 60th Assembly District, his office added.

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Black History

IN MEMORIAM: The Rev. Leon “Sonny” Clark, Longtime Orange County Pastor and Community Leader, Dies at 72

Rev. Leon William “Sonny” Clark, the longtime pastor of New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana and a prominent faith and community leader in Orange County, passed away on September 9 at the age of 72. Born in Bennettsville, South Carolina, Clark was a U.S. Navy veteran who dedicated his life to service. He served various Southern California churches before leading New Spirit Baptist Church for over 22 years, extending his work into counseling, mentoring, and civic engagement, and supporting the African American community. To learn more about his life and contributions, read more.

Published

3 days ago

September 28, 2026

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The Rev. Leon “Sonny” Clark. File photo.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Rev. Leon William “Sonny” Clark, longtime pastor of New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana and a respected faith and community leader in Orange County, died Sept. 9. He was 72.

Born Oct. 2, 1953, in Bennettsville, South Carolina, Clark was a U.S. Navy veteran who later built a life of service centered on family, faith, ministry, and community.

Clark began his formal ministry at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Altadena in 1978. After acknowledging his call to ministry in 1980, he preached his first sermon and went on to serve churches throughout Southern California, including Second Baptist Church in Riverside, Mount Vernon Baptist Church in Rubidoux, Antioch Missionary Baptist Church in Pomona, and Friendship Baptist Church in Yorba Linda.

In November 2003, Clark was called to lead New Spirit Baptist Church in Santa Ana, where he served as pastor for more than 22 years. His work extended beyond the pulpit through counseling, mentoring, civic engagement, and efforts to strengthen Orange County’s African American community.

Clark served on the Orange County Heritage Council and supported efforts to preserve and celebrate African American history and culture. He helped organize the Orange County Black History Parade and Unity Festival, served on the Interfaith Committee and the Orange County Transit Authority, and served as president of the Orange County Ministers Conference.

In 2024, the City of Santa Ana recognized Clark for his contributions to the community. He also received the Orange County Southern Baptist Association Hall of Faith Award and was previously honored as Pastor of the Year by the Orange County Heritage Council.

Clark is survived by his wife, Andrea Joyles Clark; six children, Shawn Williams, Le Ondra Clark Harvey, Kyla Coward, Joshua Clark, Marissa Clark and Ashley Clark; grandchildren and great-grandchildren; siblings; extended family; and the New Spirit Baptist Church congregation.

A wake will be held Thursday, Oct. 1, from 4 to 8 p.m. at New Spirit Baptist Church, 701 S. Sullivan St. in Santa Ana, with a remembrance service from 5 to 6:30 p.m.

A Celebration of Life will be held Friday, Oct. 2, at Friendship Baptist Church, 17145 Bastanchury Road in Yorba Linda. Viewing begins at noon, followed by the service at 1 p.m.

Burial will take place Monday, Oct. 5, at 10:15 a.m. at Riverside National Cemetery.

Clark often shared a guiding principle that shaped his ministry: “Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.”

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Economy

Poll: Becerra Widens His Lead Over Hilton; Californians Split on Wealth Tax

A new Public Policy Institute of California poll shows Democrat Xavier Becerra leads Republican Steve Hilton by 22 points in California’s governor’s race, with 60% of likely voters supporting Becerra compared to 38% for Hilton. The September survey also reveals Californians are closely divided on a proposed one-time tax on billionaires, with 52% of likely voters in favor of Proposition 40. Affordability issues are a major factor for voters. Read more to learn about the poll’s additional findings on voter sentiment.

Published

3 days ago

September 28, 2026

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Democrat Xavier Becerra and Republican Steve Hilton.

By Bo Tefu, California Black Media

Democrat Xavier Becerra holds a 22-point lead over Republican Steve Hilton in California’s governor’s race, while voters remain closely divided over a proposed one-time tax on billionaires, according to a new Public Policy Institute of California poll.

The September PPIC survey found that 60% of likely voters support Becerra, compared with 38% for Hilton. His lead is actually narrower than it was in July, when he led Hilton 61% to 36%.

Becerra leads among independent voters, with 57% supporting him compared with 38% for Hilton. Party loyalty remains strong, with 93% of Democratic likely voters backing Becerra and 92% of Republicans supporting Hilton.

Hilton leads in the Central Valley, where 52% of likely voters support him compared with 46% for Becerra.

Affordability remains a major factor: 65% of likely voters say candidates’ plans to address cost-of-living issues are “very important” to their vote.

“Affordability continues to be top of mind for Californians when considering their choice for governor,” said Mark Baldassare, PPIC Statewide Survey director and Miller Chair in Public Policy.

The poll also found a narrow split over Proposition 40, a proposed one-time tax of up to 5% on taxpayers with assets exceeding $1 billion. Fifty-two percent of likely voters said they would vote yes, while 46% said they would vote no.

Support for the wealth tax varies sharply by party. Seventy-two percent of Democrats favor Proposition 40, compared with 46% of independents and 21% of Republicans.

Two competing measures also drew majority support. Fifty-one percent back Proposition 41, while 54% support Proposition 42, both of which could affect the wealth-tax proposal.

The findings come as Californians express broader frustration with the state’s political direction. Seventy-one percent of likely voters expect bad economic times in California over the next year.

“Californians are clearly grumpy and aren’t enamored with any particular political party or movement,” Baldassare said.

The survey interviewed 1,745 California adults, including 1,103 likely voters, from Sept. 4-10. The margin of error for likely voters is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.