DETAILS: Original pinback button issued by Dallas County Voters League (DCVL) for their 1965 voter registration protest march in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965 in what would later become known as Bloody Sunday. Reads, GROW (Get Rid Of Wallace). Circa 1965. Measures 1" inch. Rare. 
 


BACKGROUND: As part of its 1965 voter registration campaign, the Dallas County Voters League DCVL organized a series of marches protesting the fact that despite the passage by Congress of the 1964 Civil Rights Act,  Governor George Wallace was still intentionally defying the law and engaging in violence in order to prevent blacks from voting. Wallace saw the campaign as personal threat not just against segregation but also to his continued reign in Montgomery. Along with his segregationist allies, he ordered a stringent police crackdown on all voting rights demonstrators.

The first victim of this crack down was Jimmie Lee, an African American civil rights activist, who while unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting rights march in his city, was attacked and beaten by State police along with white vigilantes. Jackson died eight days later of his injuries in the hospital. In direct defiance of Wallace, the DCVL vowed to not be intimidated. They announced an even larger protest and demanded Wallace's immediate removal. This response, only further enraged Wallace who declared that all such protests were illegal and ordered the Alabama State Police to bring an immediate stop to them.

On March 7, 1965, in Selma, Alabama, a peaceful 600-person civil rights demonstration organized by the DCVL, commenced in Downtown Selma. They were attacked a shot time later by heavily armed Alabama State police officers as they attempted to cross the county line on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The day's events would become known as "Bloody Sunday." This event is considered by most historians to be the turning point in the American Civil Rights Movements and the beginning of the end of Wallace's reign of terror.



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Oxxbridge Galleries was founded in 1987 and specializes in paper items with a particular emphasis on counter culture and civil rights. If you have any items you have questions about, please feel free to contact us. You will be pleased by the friendliness and knowledge of our staff.

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