It has been 50 years since unarmed marchers from Selma, Alabama set out in defiance of repression in 1965, to demonstrate African-Americans’ constitutional rights, and state troopers attacked them. <br /><br /> When Alabama’s Governor refused to protect the marchers, President Johnson ordered the US Army, National Guard, FBI and Federal Marshals to do so.<br /><br /> At that time, one hundred years after the abolition of slavery throughout the United States, citizens’ rights were still not universally upheld. <br /><br /> Martin Luther King Jr. had led ‘The March on Washington’ in 1963, and delivered his historic “I Have a Dream” speech to end racial discrimination. It led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.<br /><br /> The struggle was far from over. Peaceful protest and civil disobedience were joined by militantism, and unrest developed into violence.<br /><br /> The 1967 beating and death of a cab driver in Newark, New Jersey, rumoured to be at the hands of the police, sparked deadly riots in most major cities. King’s assassination t
