A Gallery of Selma and Montgomery Signage

On March 7, 1965, the first civil-rights march from Selma to Montgomery, AL began. The murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson by a state trooper during a peaceful march in Marion, AL two weeks earlier, as well as ongoing disenfranchisement of African-Americans because of poll taxes, literacy tests and law-enforcement intimidation, precipitated the event. As soon as the marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and left Selma, state troopers and vigilantes beat the unarmed marchers with billy clubs and repelled them with tear gas. Two days later, a second march began, but was aborted after another confrontation with police. That night, a mob murdered James Reeb, a Unitarian-Universalist minister from Boston, who’d traveled to Selma for the march.

At last, on March 21, under the protection of 2,000 U.S. Army troops ordered by President Johnson, the marchers successfully began the 65-mile march to the State Capitol. Four days later, approximately 25,000 marchers arrived at the State Capitol to demand their right to vote. Later that year, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 outlawed discriminatory practices.

In a ST-style commemoration of this historic event, we recruited Katie Fair, the daughter of Montgomery, AL-based signmaker Mark Fair, to take photos of signs in both Selma and Montgomery. In keeping with the march’s progression, we’ll begin with the Selma gallery, then proceed to Mongtomery. I hope that you enjoy this presentation. Signs don’t just identify businesses, landmarks and institutions; they provide a community’s sense of place and establish a visual context for the people who live there.