In November 1964, the leadership of the Dallas County Voters League, the principal black civil-rights organization in Selma, persuaded Martin Luther King Jr.'s Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to come to the city to assist in demonstrating against the Dallas County Board of Voting Registrars and what the league believed were the board's discriminatory registration practices. The demonstrations, which began on January 18, 1965, produced rapidly escalating tensions in Selma, culminating in mass arrests by authorities under the direction of Sheriff Jim Clark. By February 5, more than 2,400 demonstrators had been jailed.

James Gardner Clark, Jr. (1922-2007) was the sheriff of Dallas County, Alabama, from 1955 to 1966. He was one of the officials responsible for the violent arrests of civil rights protestors during the Selma to Montgomery marches of 1965, and is remembered for being a racist whose brutal tactics included using cattle prods against unarmed civil rights supporters.

John Wesley Lord (1902 -1989) was an American bishop of the Methodist Church, elected in 1948. Lord was active in the Civil Rights Movement, he marched with Martin Luther King, he met in the White House with John F. Kennedy, and he pushed for the racial integration of the Methodist Church. He was a vice president of the National Council of Churches and was active in the World Health Organization.

Johnson summoned Wallace for an urgent White House meeting after Bloody Sunday. After a three-hour meeting … Johnson said he stands ready to use the ‘full power’ of the federal government to protect the constitutional rights of Negroes in strife-torn Selma. The President deplored as an ‘American tragedy’ the events at Selma where lawmen used clubs, whips and tear gas to break up an attempted Negro voting-right march last Sunday. ‘The events of last Sunday cannot and will not be repeated’, the President declared.”  [from the affixed newspaper article]

On March 9, 1965, three Unitarian Universalist ministers in Selma for the marches were attacked on the street and beaten with clubs by four KKK members. The worst injured was Reverend James Reeb from Boston, who died on March 11 with his wife by his side.  Reeb's death provoked mourning throughout the country, and tens of thousands held vigils in his honor. President Johnson called Reeb's widow and father to express his condolences; he would later invoke Reeb's memory when he delivered a draft of the Voting Rights Act to Congress. Cordy Tindell (C.T.) Vivian (b. 1924), was a minister, author, and close friend and lieutenant of Martin Luther King's. On August 8, 2013, Vivian was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Barack Obama.

Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971) was an American political scientist, academic, and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. He was the first African American to be so honored. He was involved in the formation and administration of the United Nations. In 1963, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President John F. Kennedy. Bunche was an active and vocal supporter of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. He participated in the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech, and also in the Selma to Montgomery march in 1965, which contributed to passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965 and federal enforcement of voting rights; Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972) was a Polish-born American rabbi and one of the leading Jewish theologians and Jewish philosophers of the 20th century. Heschel, a professor of Jewish mysticism at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, authored a number of widely read books on Jewish philosophy and was active in the civil rights movement.

Dr. Martin Luther King and his wife Coretta with Ralph Abernathy and D.F. Reese; Andrew Young smiles in the foreground. Standing to the left of King is Ralph Johnson Bunche (1904-1971), the American political scientist, academic, and diplomat who received the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his late 1940s mediation in Israel. He was the first African American to be so honored.