For the fiftieth anniversary of the march for voting rights from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Newbery Medalist Russell Freedman has written a riveting account of this pivotal event in the history of civil rights. In the early 1960s, tensions in the segrated South intensified. Tired of reprisals for attempting to register to vote, Selma's black community began to protest. In January 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a voting rights march and

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"Reverend F.D. Reese was a leader of the Voting Rights Movement in Selma, Alabama. As a teacher and principal, he recognized that his colleagues were viewed with great respect in the city. Could he convince them to risk their jobs--and perhaps their lives--by organizing a teachers-only march to the county courthouse to demand their right to vote? On January 22, 1965, the Black teachers left their classrooms and did just that, with Reverend Reese leading...

The 1870 passage of the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, that no man could be denied the right to vote, was a big step forward in the civil rights movement. However, nearly 100 years later, most African Americans in the South still could not vote. In March 1965, a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state Capitol in Montgomery was planned to demand voting rights. But the marches only made it six blocks before they were stopped and brutally attacked...