James Bevel - The Alabama Project and The 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement

The Alabama Project and The 1965 Selma Voting Rights Movement

Weeks after the March On Washington, in September 1963, a bomb at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham killed four young girls attending Sunday School. Bevel responded by proposing the Alabama Voting Rights Project, co-wrote the project proposal with his then wife, Diane Nash, and the two soon moved to Alabama and began to implement the project along with Birmingham student activist James Orange. Starting in late 1963 Bevel, Nash and Orange organized the voting rights movement in Alabama until, in late 1964, SCLC and Dr. King (SCLC's Board and King had opposed and did not work on the Alabama Project) came to Selma to work alongside their Alabama Voting Rights Project, and SNCC's Voting Rights Project (headed at that time by Reverend Prathia Hall and Worth Long - Bernard Lafayette had been its first chairman). The Bevel/Nash Alabama Project and its SNCC counterpart then became collectively known as the Selma Voting Rights Movement.

The Selma Voting Rights Movement officially began in early January 1965, grew, and had some successes. Then, on February 16, 1965, a young man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, went with his mother and grandfather to participate in a nighttime march led by Reverend C. T. Vivian to free James Orange, who was being held in jail in Marion, Alabama. After the street lights were turned off Jackson was shot in the stomach while defending his mother from an attack by the Alabama State Troopers, and he died a few days later.

When Bevel heard of Jackson's death he called for a march from Selma to Montgomery to talk to Governor George Wallace about the attack in which Jackson was shot. During the first march a large group of marchers — including SNCC Chairman John Lewis and Amelia Boynton — were bludgeoned and tear-gassed on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on what then became known as "Bloody Sunday". After a court order by Judge Frank Johnson cleared the way for the march, hundreds of religious, labor and civic leaders, and many celebrities and citizens alike, walked the 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery. Before this final march occurred, President Lyndon Johnson had gone on national television to address a joint session of Congress and demanded that it pass a comprehensive Voting Rights Act.

Because of the unprecedented success of the 1963-1965 Alabama Project, in 1965 SCLC gave its highest honor—the Rosa Parks Award—to James Bevel and Diane Nash.