It’s America’s most important road
You can drive it in an hour. But if you do, you’ll miss the point.
The Selma to Montgomery March Byway follows U.S. Highway 80 for 54 miles across central Alabama, tracing the exact route where marchers walked for five days in 1965 to demand the right to vote.
Congress made it a National Historic Trail in 1996 and gave the road an All-American Road designation, the highest honor any highway can get.
Give yourself two to three hours to stop along the way. The first stop will hold you in place.
Only 2 percent could vote in Dallas County
In early 1965, Black residents made up more than half the population of Dallas County, Ala. About 2 percent of them could vote.
When state troopers shot and killed activist Jimmie Lee Jackson that February, civil rights leaders called for a march from Selma to Montgomery.
On March 7, about 600 people started walking. They made it to the Edmund Pettus Bridge before state troopers hit them with billy clubs and tear gas.
Television cameras caught all of it. The footage went national, and the country changed direction.
Thousands poured into Selma after Bloody Sunday
The footage from Bloody Sunday drew supporters from across the country. On March 21, about 3,200 marchers set out from Selma under federal protection.
They walked between seven and 17 miles a day for five days. By the time they reached Montgomery on March 25, the crowd had swelled to about 25,000.
Five months later, on Aug. 6, President Lyndon B.Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.
Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church is where it all began
All three marches started from the same place: Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church at 410 Martin Luther King Jr.Street in Selma.
African American builder A.J. Farley put it up in 1908, a Romanesque Revival building with twin towers.
During the first months of 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference ran its operations from inside.
After Bloody Sunday, the church took in injured marchers.
A bust of Dr. King stands outside. The building has gone through structural restoration, so check ahead for tour times.
Walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge yourself
Six blocks from Brown Chapel, the Edmund Pettus Bridge crosses the Alabama River. This is the ground where troopers attacked the marchers on Bloody Sunday and sent dozens to the hospital.
The bridge sits on a bluff, and its center rises about 100 feet above the water. You can walk across it and stand in the spot where the confrontation happened.
It became a National Historic Landmark in 2013. Every year, thousands return for the Bridge Crossing Jubilee to honor what took place here.
Selma packs civil rights history into a few blocks
At the foot of the bridge on the east side of the river, the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute displays the story of the campaign.
The museum opens Monday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., with weekend visits by appointment. Nearby, First Baptist Church served as headquarters for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the movement.
The Dallas County Courthouse drew most of Selma’s local voting rights marches. Foot Soldiers Park sits close to the bridge, with monuments honoring the leaders who put their bodies on the line.
The open farmland between Selma and Montgomery
Head east on Highway 80 and the city falls away. The road rolls through farmland and gentle hills in Lowndes County, the same land that marchers crossed over five days.
Road signs mark historic stops and the locations of four campsites. The David Hall Farm, about seven miles out of Selma, was the first.
A supporter offered the land and faced harassment from neighbors for it. Twenty miles from Selma, near White Hall, the Rosie Steele property held the second camp.
Cold rain soaked the marchers that night.
A stone memorial for Viola Liuzzo on Highway 80
About 20 miles east of Selma, a stone memorial stands along Highway 80. It marks the place where Viola Liuzzo was killed.
She was a 39-year-old mother of five from Detroit, Mich., who drove to Alabama to help with the march.
For five days, she shuttled marchers between Selma and Montgomery in her own car. On the night of March 25, 1965, Ku Klux Klan members shot her while she drove this road.
The Women of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference put up the memorial in 1991.
City of St. Jude hosted the final campsite and a concert
The City of St. Jude is a 36-acre campus in Montgomery, and it served as the last stop before the finish.
Founded in 1934, St. Jude ran the first integrated hospital in the Southeast. On the night of March 24, 1965, thousands of marchers camped on its athletic field.
Harry Belafonte organized a rally that night called “Stars for Freedom,” and the stage was coffin shipping crates topped with plywood. St.Jude opened its own interpretive center in 2015 with over 100 photos and items from the march.
Dr. King spoke from the Capitol steps in Montgomery
The trail ends where the march ended: the Alabama State Capitol in Montgomery. On March 25, 1965, Dr.King addressed the crowd from the steps in his “How Long, Not Long” speech.
March leaders tried to deliver a petition to Gov.George Wallace, but he turned them away. The building dates to 1851 and doubled as the first Capitol of the Confederacy in 1861.
You can go inside and walk through the restored historic chambers.
Dexter Avenue church is steps from the Capitol
Just down the block from the Capitol sits Dexter Avenue King Memorial Baptist Church, where Dr. King served as pastor from 1954 to 1960.
Leaders organized the 1955 Montgomery Bus Boycott from inside this building. It became a National Historic Landmark in 1974 and has been submitted to UNESCO’s tentative World Heritage list.
You can tour the church Tuesday through Saturday, hourly from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and see Dr. King’s original pulpit and pastoral office. The nearby Dexter Parsonage Museum preserves the home where the King family lived.
Drive the Selma to Montgomery March Byway in Alabama
You can pick up the 54-mile byway at either end, but starting in Selma and heading east to Montgomery puts you in the marchers’ footsteps.
Interpretive centers along the route open Wednesday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., though hours can shift, so check the official NPS site before you go.
The drive itself takes about an hour without stops.
Both Selma and Montgomery hold plenty of additional civil rights landmarks beyond the trail, so build in a full day if you can.
This article was created with AI assistance and human editing.
Read more from this brand:
The post Alabama’s 54-mile highway retraces the march that changed American voting forever appeared first on When In Your State.