50th Anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday'

This Day in History: March 7, 1965 - Marks 50 years since the attack on protesters, remembered as 'Bloody Sunday' -The march gained the nickname "Bloody Sunday" after its 600 marchers were attacked at the Edmund Pettus Bridge after leaving Selma; --- The three Selma to Montgomery marches in 1965 were part of the Selma Voting Rights Movement and led to the passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the 1960's American Civil Rights Movement. Activists publicized the three protest marches to walk the 54-mile highway from Selma to the Alabama state capital of Montgomery as showing the desire of black American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression.

A series of discriminatory requirements and practices disenfranchised most of the millions of African Americans across the South since the turn of the century. The African American group known as The Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) launched a voters registration campaign in Selma in 1963. Joined by organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), they began working that year in a renewed effort to register black voters. Finding resistance by white officials to be intractable, even after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 ended segregation, the DCVL invited Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the activists of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to join them. SCLC brought many prominent civil rights and civic leaders to Selma in January 1965. Local and regional protests began, with 3,000 people arrested by the end of February.

On February 26, 1965, activist and deacon Jimmie Lee Jackson died after being mortally shot several days earlier by a state trooper during a peaceful march in Marion, Alabama. To defuse and refocus the community's outrage, SCLC Director of Direct Action James Bevel, who was directing SCLC's Selma Voting Rights Movement, called for a march of dramatic length, from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery. Bevel had been working on his Alabama Project for voting rights since late 1963.

The first march took place on March 7, 1965. Bevel, Amelia Boynton, and others helped organize it. The march gained the nickname "Bloody Sunday" after its 600 marchers were attacked at the Edmund Pettus Bridge after leaving Selma; state troopers and county posse attacked the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and tear gas. Law enforcement beat Boynton unconscious; media publicized a picture of her lying wounded on the bridge worldwide.

The second march took place March 9. Troopers, police, and marchers confronted each other, but when the troopers stepped aside to let them pass, King led the marchers back to the church. He was seeking protection by a federal court for the march. That night, a white group beat and murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, who had come to Selma to march in the second march. Many other clergy and sympathizers from across the country also attended the second march.

The violence of "Bloody Sunday" and of Reeb's death led to a national outcry and some acts of civil disobedience, targeting both the Alabama state and federal governments. The protesters demanded protection for the Selma marchers and a new federal voting rights law to enable African Americans to register and vote without harassment. President Lyndon Johnson, whose administration had been working on a voting rights law, held a televised joint session of Congress on March 15 to ask for the bill's introduction and passage.

With Governor Wallace refusing to protect the marchers, President Johnson committed to do so. The third march started March 21. Protected by 2,000 soldiers of the U.S. Army, 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under Federal command, and many FBI agents and Federal Marshals, the marchers averaged 10 miles (16 km) a day along U.S. Route 80, known in Alabama as the "Jefferson Davis Highway". The marchers arrived in Montgomery on March 24 and at the Alabama State Capitol on March 25. With thousands having joined the campaign, 25,000 people entered the capital city that day in support of voting rights.

The route is memorialized as the Selma To Montgomery Voting Rights Trail, and is a U.S. National Historic Trail. #Selma50 #BloodySunday  

“No one can construct for you the bridge upon which precisely you must cross the stream of life; no one but you yourself alone.” ― Friedrich Nietzsche

Progress begins with action

Don't be that judge, that critic, that bearer of negative review, whose criticism adds insult to injury and are intended, in no shape, form or fashion to empower those being critiqued by you. Are you the one sitting back waiting to find fault...to point out errors, to judge quickly, simply because you're too afraid to actually get on about the business of the "doing" of the thing that you so resent someone else attempting? 

Be careful of your assessments of those who have actually thrown off the cloak of fear and decided to step into the ring to follow their dreams, whether they come up short or they eventually make the great success of the vision they've dreamed about for years.  

So, take it easy and recognize what your true intention is when you start to "critique" a subject/subject matter.  Your task is secondary....progress can only happen by those who are attempting the task.

"It behooves every man to remember that the work of the critic is of altogether secondary importance, and that, in the end, progress is accomplished by the man who does things." -  Theodore Roosevelt

You hold the keys to your own well-being

"God has entrusted me with myself." – Epictetus

If you don't take your personal success into your own hands, no one will do it for you. We may not be in control of every external influence or experience but we do have free choice and control of what we do and think. Excuses and placing blame on others or situations will simply stall any progress. Start with small practical changes. Ultimately, your success is dependent on you. (Taken from article: 8 Ancient Sayings to Inspire Health & Happiness, David Zulberg) Read more ancient sayings here from MindBodyGreen

Daily diet of Faith, Truth & Love

 It's not about what others are telling you or trying to convince you to believe.....It's all about what YOU Believe.  What's happening with your steady diet of "self-talk" - Are you feeding your mind what is needed to keep you healthy spiritually, intellectually and emotionally?  Be sure to include a steady stream of Faith, Truth and Love in your mind's diet. It does your life good...recommended intake throughout the day.....impossible to overdose!

Step into the Arena

Step into the arena! Start taking steps to start the business, write the book, finish school, start school, change your diet, begin the exercise plan, be kinder.....Whatever thoughts you have or whatever visions have been placed on the back-burner...Now is the time to start. 

Don't be the spectator, sitting back criticizing the deeds of everyone else, who was at least BOLD enough to take a chance....to actually, get in the arena and test the waters and see what the end results  would be.  Don't allow your resentment of those who've actually stepped up to the plate cause you to be the critical spectator.....Don't just think about, dream about and talk about what should be done ...Get in the arena and take the hard blows....setbacks heal in time, but at least you'll know what you're made of and you'll know that at least YOU Tried, so .... Step into the Arena!

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” - Theodore Roosevelt