<Dd> 16th Street Baptist Church bombing </Dd> <Dd> Selma to Montgomery marches </Dd> <P> The Selma to Montgomery marches were three protest marches, held in 1965, along the 54 - mile (87 km) highway from Selma, Alabama to the state capital of Montgomery . The marches were organized by nonviolent activists to demonstrate the desire of African - American citizens to exercise their constitutional right to vote, in defiance of segregationist repression, and were part of a broader voting rights movement underway in Selma and throughout the American South . By highlighting racial injustice, they contributed to passage that year of the Voting Rights Act, a landmark federal achievement of the Civil Rights Movement . </P> <P> Southern state legislatures had passed and maintained a series of discriminatory requirements and practices that had disenfranchised most of the millions of African Americans across the South throughout the 20th century . The African - American group known as the Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) launched a voter registration campaign in Selma in 1963 . Joined by organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), they began working that year in a renewed effort to register black voters . </P>

Reason for the 1965 selma to montgomery march