Perry County Courthouse: The Night in Marion That Led to Selma

The courthouse in Marion, Alabama, is a building from the 1840s. What happened in the square in front of it one night in February 1965 is why it is now part of the National Park Service's African American Civil Rights Network: it set off the chain of events that led to Selma, Bloody Sunday and the Voting Rights Act.

The building

The night of February 18, 1965

1. After a mass meeting that evening, several hundred people left Zion United Methodist Church — across the square from the courthouse — to march to the local jail.
2. They had barely left the church when law enforcement met them. The streetlights were turned off, and police began beating the demonstrators in the courthouse square. People fled for cover.
3. Jimmie Lee Jackson, a young African American civil rights activist, was there with members of his family. They took refuge in a café nearby; state troopers followed them in.
4. When Jackson tried to protect his mother, a state trooper shot him twice in the stomach.
5. He died days later in a hospital in Selma.

What followed

Jackson's death was one of the sparks for the three marches in Selma. The second, the first attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery, became known as Bloody Sunday — and the national reaction to it led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Network

The African American Civil Rights Network, created by the African American Civil Rights Act of 2017 and coordinated by the National Park Service, recognizes the movement and the sacrifices of those who fought segregation and discrimination. It tells the movement's story through public and private places, facilities and programs — from courthouses and churches to schools and homes. Read more about the Network and about Jimmie Lee Jackson.

Sources

Written from "Perry County Courthouse (Marion, Alabama)," African American Civil Rights Network, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain.