Remembering the martyrs of Bloody Sunday

Many people throughout the South gave their lives for civil rights. Among them were these three in Alabama in 1965: One who inspired the Selma-to-Montgomery marches, and two who died supporting them.

Jimmie Lee Jackson

Jackson, 26, an Army veteran and the father of a young daughter, was living in Marion in 1965. A deacon at St. James Baptist Church, he was active in efforts in Perry County, Ala., to register blacks to vote. He had himself attempted to register to vote, but had not been allowed to.

On Feb. 18, 1965, about 200 civil rights protesters held a rare nighttime march in Marion. As marchers made their way toward the Perry County Jail, the city's streetlights suddenly went out. Marion police officers, along with Perry County sheriff's deputies and Alabama state troopers, began beating the marchers.

Jackson and other marchers sought refuge in Mack's Cafe, along with Jackson's mother, Viola Jackson, and his grandfather, Cager Lee. Witnesses say troopers entered the restaurant and began beating those inside. Jackson was shot in the stomach as he tried to protect his relatives.

Jackson died eight days later from an infection at Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma, in neighboring Dallas County. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke at Jackson's funeral.

It was Jackson's death that led civil rights leaders to call for a voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. That march was set for March 7, 1965, a day that would become known as "Bloody Sunday." About 600 people tried to march to Montgomery before being attacked at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge by club-wielding troopers and mounted possemen of the Dallas County sheriff's office.

On March 9, led by King, the group marched peacefully to the bridge but then turned back.

On March 21, about 3,200 marchers left Selma again. This time they made it to Montgomery four days later, by which time their ranks had swelled to about 25,000.

In 2010, former trooper James Fowler, then 77, pleaded guilty of manslaughter in Jackson's death and served five months in prison.

The Rev. James Reeb

Reeb, 38, a white Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, was among hundreds of clergymen from across the country who heeded Martin Luther King Jr.'s call to come to Selma for a second march in the wake of Bloody Sunday. On March 9, 1965, Reeb, a father of four, ate supper at Walker's Cafe with a group of other ministers. Walker's Cafe was a "colored" cafe, to use the segregation-era term, but had recently begun serving white customers.

As the ministers were walking back to Brown Chapel AME Church, the heart of Selma's civil rights movement, a group of four white men approached them from behind. Reeb was struck in the head with a club or pipe. He died March 11 in a Birmingham hospital. Reeb was eulogized by King, and his death was referenced by President Lyndon Johnson in his efforts to get the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passed by Congress.

Three white men were indicted in Reeb's slaying, but they were later acquitted.

Viola Gregg Liuzzo

Liuzzo, 39, a white Detroit mother of five, drove to Selma after Bloody Sunday to join the protest movement. She helped out by driving marchers and protesters around the city.

Following the successful conclusion of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, she was ferrying marchers back to Selma. At the time, a white woman seen driving a car carrying black men was in danger of being attacked by racists. On the night of March 25, 1965, she was driving back to Selma with Leroy Moton, 19, as a passenger.

On a secluded stretch of U.S. Highway 80 in rural Lowndes County, a car carrying four white men, believed to have been members of the Ku Klux Klan, began chasing her car. She tried to speed away, but the other car caught up, and the occupants opened fire. Liuzzo was shot in the head and killed. Moton was injured but recovered.

One of the occupants of the car chasing Liuzzo's was Gary Thomas Rowe Jr., an FBI informant.

The other three men were acquitted of murder in state court. Those men were later convicted of violating Liuzzo's civil rights in federal court. They were given sentences of 10 years each.

Rowe, who died in 1998, was never prosecuted in the Liuzzo case.

Roney also reports for the Montgomery (Ala.) Advertiser.