Walking with the Wind

The “final act for the movement as [Lewis] knew it” (361) was the March from Selma to Montgomery. On March 7, 1965, Lewis and Hosea Williams, a protest organizer for the SCLC, co-led the march, which began at a local downtown church. Many of the participants had come from church and were wearing church clothes. Lewis wore “a suit and tie, a light tan raincoat, dress shoes and my backpack” (337).

Lewis and the other protest organizers did not expect much trouble from local and state authorities. However, a massive state trooper presence stopped the over 600 marchers as they began to walk over the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Lewis was frightened—he could not swim. The troopers gave marchers two minutes to turn around and go back to the church. Lewis notes, “We couldn’t go forward. We couldn’t go back. There was only one option left that I could see. ‘We should kneel and pray,’ I said to Hosea” (339-340). After only one minute, the police advanced on the crowd with bullwhips, clubs, and tear gas. The state troopers chased men, women, and children gasping from tear gas over the bridge and beat them mercilessly. The police beat Lewis so badly that he thought he was dying.