Photo: Matt Herron, Selma–Montgomery March, Alabama, 1965: Rev. Martin Luther King leads singing marchers toward Montgomery.
In 1857, Frederick Douglass observed, “This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have found out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them, and these will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
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A century later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. brought these words to life with the Civil Rights Movement. He made A demand and, with the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a measure of the demand was met. But it was not met without retaliation, and ultimately Dr. King would pay with his life, a life that the government who had him killed now honors with a Federal holiday.
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Photo: Maria Varela, near Canton, Mississippi, 1966: A hand-drawn black panther indicates a change of movement symbolism as young men joined the Meredith March in response to the call for Black Power.