Home > Law Journals > JDR > Vol. 2025 > Iss. 2 (2026)
Abstract
On March 7, 1965, civil rights leaders John Lewis and Hosea Williams led hundreds of people across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Their goal was to march to the state capitol of Montgomery in protest of racial segregation and the suppression of African American voters. On the other side of Pettus bridge, state troopers and spectators waving Confederate flags waited for them. When the protesters reached the end of Pettus, state trooper Major John Cloud ordered them to stop the march and leave. Williams tried to speak with Major Cloud, but Major Cloud rebuffed him. When the protestors continued their march, violence erupted. The state trooper attacked the marchers with tear gas, police clubs, and whips. Troopers on horseback chased and charged at protesters. The officers injured eighty-four people, with seventeen of them requiring hospitalization. State troopers brutally attacked John Lewis, leaving him with a fractured skull. Americans now remember this day with a name that captures the brutality inflicted on the protestors: Bloody Sunday.
Recommended Citation
Julianna Leung,
“America’s Peacemaker” Needs a Makeover: The Department of Justice’s Community Relations Service Should Use Transformative Mediation and Restorative Justice in Today’s Black Lives Matter
Movement,
2025 J. Disp. Resol.
(2026)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/jdr/vol2025/iss2/11