As people across the nation flocked to the movies to watch “Selma,” 80-year-old Petersburg native Herbert V. Coulton Sr. already knew the story — because he was there.

“It was indescribable,” Mr. Coulton said. “They did anything they could to stop us. It’s hard to believe how rough things were.”

Mr. Coulton, who was the Virginia field director for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at the time, went to the march in the Alabama city in 1965 to join the critical and growing effort to gain voting rights for African-Americans.

He described how white police officers on foot and horseback severely beat marchers with billy clubs and bullwhips, sprayed them with tear gas and knocked them to the ground with high-powered water hoses.

“It was awful,” he told the Free Press from his home this week. “Some people were knocked unconscious and others were screaming and badly bleeding.”

German Shepherd dogs leashed by police chewed into the flesh of demonstrators, he said.

Refusing to succumb to the terror and intimidation tactics, the peaceful demonstrators, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., changed U.S. history forever when they completed the third and final march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery.

The 54-mile civil rights march began March 21, 1965, with about 3,000 peaceful marchers. But by the time they completed the five-day walk March 25 at the State Capitol in Montgomery, an estimated 25,000 demonstrators celebrated at a victory rally.

“There was a lot of pride in that moment,” Mr. Coulton recalled.

A little more than four months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that prohibited racial discrimination in voting. His action was spurred in large part by the final triumphant march, which included two earlier unsuccessful attempts to march to Montgomery.

The importance of the iconic march is more pronounced today, with the federal Voting Rights Act under siege after the changed U.S. history forever when they completed the third and final march in Alabama from Selma to Montgomery.

The 54-mile civil rights march began March 21, 1965, with about 3,000 peaceful marchers. But by the time they completed the five-day walk March 25 at the State Capitol in Montgomery, an estimated 25,000 demonstrators celebrated at a victory rally.

“There was a lot of pride in that moment,” Mr. Coulton recalled.

A little more than four months later, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that prohibited racial discrimination in voting. His action was spurred in large part by the final triumphant march, which included two earlier unsuccessful attempts to march to Montgomery.

The importance of the iconic march is more pronounced today, with the federal Voting Rights Act under siege after the U.S. Supreme Court in June 2013 struck down key provisions in the act that determined which states must get federal permission before changes are made in their voting laws. Virginia, a former slave-holding state, was among nine Southern states covered by the highly controversial ruling.

Reflecting on how the Selma movement has helped open op- portunities to African-Americans, Mr. Coulton noted, “Progress has been made, but there’s still a long ways to go.”

“We have to learn how to treat each other better — from our schools to our churches to our communities,” he added.

Mr. Coulton, who is recovering at home after a hospital visit, said he plans to see the movie when he is able.

“I’m glad that it is coming out,” he said. “It should have come out before now.”

Mr. Coulton talked about the Selma march, his association with Dr. King and his time in the Civil Rights Movement in his 2010 self-published book, “In the Shadow of Giants.”

He recalls going to Atlanta in 1962 to be interviewed by Dr. King, the SCLC’s first president, for the field director position in Virginia.

“Man, I was nervous,” he wrote in the book. “Here I am, a poor boy from Blandford, about to have a private conversation and an interview with a living legend, the Rev. Dr. Martin L. King Jr.”

Mr. Coulton took the job and helped lead efforts to mobilize people to register to vote in Virginia and throughout the South. His work continued even after Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis in April 1968. He endured police beatings, faced threats from the Ku Klux Klan and was thrown in jail.

Demonstrators mobilized, at Dr. King’s behest, for the Selma marches as part of a major voting rights campaign. Mr. Coul- ton said he and about 25 other Virginia activists rode a bus to Alabama to take part.

Demonstrators were further fueled in their efforts because Alabama state troopers had attacked participants during a Feb. 18 march in Marion, Ala., shooting 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson in the stomach while he was trying to protect his mother from an officer’s billy club blows. Mr. Jackson died eight days later,

galvanizing the movement.


On what is now called “Bloody Sunday,” March 7, 1965, some 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma on U.S. 80. They got only as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge, six blocks away, before violence erupted.

Led by current Georgia Congressman John Lewis, then the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the late Hosea Williams, a SCLC organizer, the marchers pro- ceeded toward armed state troopers waiting across the bridge.

After an eerie silence, troopers wearing gas masks furiously advanced on the marchers, beating them with billy clubs and releasing tear gas. Mr. Lewis was among those knocked uncon- scious as other marchers retreated back to Selma.

Two days later, on March 9, Dr. King led a “symbolic” march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge. He knelt in prayer, then turned around and led the demonstrators back to Selma.

Civil rights leaders then sought court protection for a third, full-scale march from Selma to Montgomery.

Segregationist Alabama Gov. George Wallace refused to protect the marchers, but President Johnson committed to do so.

Protected by 2,000 Army soldiers, 1,900 members of the Alabama National Guard under federal command and many FBI agents and federal marshals, the marchers set out from Selma.

Hopewell native Curtis W. Harris, a 90-year-old retired min- ister and former president of the Virginia SCLC and national SCLC vice president, also was on the march and, according to accounts, selflessly served as a human shield to Dr. King, who led the march.

“We didn’t know how things would turn out,” Mr. Coulton recalled. “Dr. King knew people wanted to kill him, but he went anyway. Many of the people we faced along the way were pretty violent. We faced many threats. In many ways, you really didn’t know who your friends were.”

The marchers averaged about 12 miles a day. They slept in fields along the way, arriving in Montgomery on March 24 and finally at the Alabama State Capitol the following day.

Along the way, Mr. Coulton recalled, “As we got to talking to some of the white people, they weren’t as bad as they acted many times. Many of them were really just fearful.”

He said many other white supporters also joined the march.

Looking back now on the trailblazing march, Mr. Coulton said Selma was an important part of American history, and because of it, “this country is better today than it was then.”

“There is an even better day coming,” he predicted. “I know it is.”