March 25, 1965 | "Our God is Marching On!"
They told us we wouldn't get here. And there were those who said that we would get here only over their dead bodies, but all the world today knows that we are here and that we are standing before the forces of power in the state of Alabama saying, 'We ain't going to let nobody turn us around."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
March 25, 1965
- This address was the culmination of one of the movement's most brutal but critical campaigns.
- In this course of the Selma campaign, three civil rights activists were killed and numerous marchers were beaten at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
- The speech marked the triumphant end of the first phase of the civil rights movement, which sought legal and political rights. The next phase would focus on economic inequality.
- King gave his speech while standing at the steps of the State Capitol in Montgomery, a city known as the "Cradle of the Confederacy."