Montgomery to Montgomery, starting in Selma. It sounds strange, it sounds like a poorly crafted tongue twister, yet there is much more to it than appears at first glance. Those familiar with the history of the United States of America know that this 2025 is not just a special year for Donald Trump’s controversial second presidency. No, it is particular because in these twelve long months, indeed now nine, almost at the end of what we still call the “new year,” two key anniversaries are being celebrated. Two anniversaries to remember and, above all, to understand and internalize in order to grasp the meaning of a struggle that marked an era: the struggle for justice and civil rights.
Civil rights. A phrase that evokes legendary battles and equally iconic figures who not only made history, but wrote it. Indeed, they are History, with a capital “S.” Their names? Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. The order in which we mention them is not random and is not dictated by a polite “women first.” No, there is a specific reason: Rosa Parks is mentioned first because it was she who lit the spark of a revolution. It was her resistance, that December 1, 1955, that started the wave of protests, demands and demonstrations that marked the struggle for the rights of the African American community.
And here we could bring up the theory of “sliding doors,” the revolving doors of fate. If Rosa Parks, a humble seamstress from Montgomery, had given up her seat on the bus that night, would the whole subsequent chain of events have ever happened? Would we have ever witnessed August 28, 1963, the day Martin Luther King delivered the legendary “I Have a Dream” speech?
Perhaps we are overemphasizing those events, but it is inevitable. Looking at today’s world and the way injustices are dealt with, it comes naturally to feel a certain nostalgia. Even those who did not live through those years, but knew them only through stories from grandparents and parents, feel the weight of that past.
By August 1963, Medgar Evers had been assassinated a few months before, while King, with that speech, earned worldwide acclaim and, a year later, the Nobel Peace Prize. That was in December 1964. A few months later, after nearly a decade of struggles that had led to concrete results, such as the dismantling of Jim Crow segregationist laws, the civil rights movement set its sights on a new goal: guaranteeing African Americans the right to vote.
The problem? In the United States, registering to vote also meant being able to be called to serve on juries in trials. In the Deep South, where hate crimes were commonplace, preventing African Americans from voting also meant excluding them from juries. The result was a system of “justice” that always favored whites.
And here we are at the starting point: Montgomery to Montgomery, starting in Selma. Two small towns, the first in Tennessee, the second in Alabama, separated by 54 miles (about 90 km). On March 7, 1965, a Sunday at dawn, the first march began from Selma to claim the right to vote. The first attempt ended in a brutal police crackdown on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Images of the violence went around the world. It was one of the first times such an event was broadcast live on television. That day went down in history as “Bloody Sunday.”
Martin Luther King was not present that day. For security reasons, some said. For personal reasons, suggests Ava DuVernay’s 2014 film “Selma,” which alludes to tensions with his wife Coretta.
Two days later, on the following Tuesday, the protesters tried again. This time King was with them. But when they reached the Montgomery border, he decided not to cross it. The reason? He wanted President Lyndon Johnson to make a real commitment to civil rights. The law was there, but its substantive implementation was still far off.
The turning point came after the second march, when a white pastor was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan. The third march, the final one, began on March 16 and ended on the 24th, with a procession to the Alabama federal courthouse. It was a historic victory for the civil rights movement.
Sixty years later, much has been done, but much remains to be done. Not only in the United States. And certainly, progress will not come through today’s methods of division and conflict. It will take dialogue, compassion and, above all, that determination that led thousands of people to walk those legendary 54 miles in March 1965.
The article Selma to Montgomery: the legendary 54 miles – 60 years comes from TheNewyorker.
