Selma: The Bridge to the Ballot

Teaching Activity. Teaching for Change. 2015. 20 pages.
Introductory lesson on key people and events in the long history of the Selma freedom movement.

Teaching Activity. By Adam Sanchez. Rethinking Schools. 24 pages.
A series of role plays that explore the history and evolution of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, including freedom rides and voter registration.

Teaching Activity. By Ursula Wolfe-Rocca.
Unit with three lessons on voting rights, including the history of the struggle against voter suppression in the United States.

Article. By Emilye Crosby. If We Knew Our History Series.
Too much of what we learn about Selma and the struggle for voting rights focuses on the actions of famous leaders. But there is a “people’s history” of Selma we all can learn from.

Article. By Howard Zinn. Excerpt from Chapter 5 of You Can’t Be Neutral on a Moving Train.
Howard Zinn’s first-hand account of Selma’s Freedom Day in 1963.

Book — Non-fiction. By Sheyann Webb and Rachel West Nelson as told to Frank Sikora. 1980. 168 pages.
The moving story of two young girls who were caught up in the 1965 movement in Selma, Alabama.

Jimmie Lee Jackson was beaten and shot by an Alabama state trooper during a peaceful voting rights march on Feb. 18. He died eight days later.

To protest the police murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson and for voting rights, more than 600 people began a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery.

Rev. James Reeb died as a result of being severely beaten by a group of white men during Bloody Sunday in Selma two days earlier.

The Selma to Montgomery marchers traveled into Lowndes County, working with local leaders to organize residents into a new political organization: the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO).

The Selma marches were three protest marches about voting rights, held in 1965.