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On March 15, 1965, just days after the "Bloody Sunday" confrontation in Selma, Alabama that shocked the nation, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress and the American people in a nationally televised speech. He announced the voting rights legislation he would be introducing. "Their cause must be our cause, too," he said, referring to civil rights activists. "[A]ll of us... must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome." In his closing words, the president invoked a rallying cry of the civil rights movement. An SCLC staffer watching the speech with Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. remembered seeing a tear of joy run down the minister's cheek. Upon passage, Johnson's legislation would be known as the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
page created on 8.23.06
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