On the day that became known as Bloody Sunday, John Lewis and nonviolent marchers were beaten and tear-gassed by Alabama state troopers in Selma. The violence helped put Lewis on the global stage as a hero of the U.S. civil rights movement.
FILE - In this March 7, 1965, file photo, a state trooper swings a billy club at John Lewis, right foreground, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala. Lewis sustained a fractured skull. Lewis, who carried the struggle against racial discrimination from Southern battlegrounds of the 1960s to the halls of Congress, died Friday, July 17, 2020.
With fellow civil rights activist Hosea Williams at his side, Lewis finally stopped a few feet away from the phalanx of troopers commanded by Maj. John Cloud of the Alabama Department of Public Safety. Other marchers stopped behind them, shifting their feet uncomfortably on the bridge shoulder. Archival film footage and photos show a line of roughly two dozen troopers wearing gas masks as they approach the long, peaceful line led by Lewis. A trooper jabbed the butt of a nightstick toward Lewis and officers quickly pushed into the group. Feet became tangled and bodies hit both the grass roadside and the asphalt road. Screams rang out.
Lewis was just a few feet away from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. at the front of more than 3,000 marchers when they left Selma on March 21, 1965, for the epic 52-mile walk to Montgomery. Wallace, who had vowed “segregation forever” during his 1963 inaugural and served four terms as governor, refused to meet with them.
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