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The tidy market town of SELMA , fifty miles west of Montgomery, became in the early Sixties the focal point of a national voting rights campaign. Demonstrations, meetings and attempts to register were repeatedly met by police violence, before the murder of a black protester by a state trooper prompted the decision to organize the historic march from Selma to Montgomery . On "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965, six hundred marchers set off across the steep incline of the imposing, narrow Edmund Pettus Bridge . As they went over the apex of the bridge, a line of state troopers fired tear gas without warning, lashing out at the panic-stricken demonstrators with nightsticks and cattleprods. This violent confrontation, broadcast all over the world, is credited with having directly influenced the passage of the Voting Rights Act the following year. The full story is told in the National Voting Rights Museum , beside the bridge at 1012 Water Ave (Tues-Sat 1-5pm; $4). Outside the 1965 campaign headquarters at the Brown Chapel AME Church , 410 Martin Luther King St, a bust of Dr King forms part of a monument to the struggle that also includes explanatory plaques along the street.
Selma's history stretches back well before the Sixties; its huge arsenal and ship-building plant were prime targets for Union troops who looted and burned most of the buildings in March 1865. One of the few remaining plantation homes is Sturdivant Hall , 713 Mabry St (Tues-Sat 9am-4pm, closed Sun; $5), an attractively furnished house with an accessible cupola and lovely grounds.
Lined with independently owned stores and cafés, Broad Street is the town's busy main thoroughfare, running into the wide riverfront Water Avenue , which still feels set in the Forties with its frontier-style storefronts, seed warehouses and garages. Just a few blocks away stand the beautiful homes of the town's Historic District.
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