Reverend Clark Olsen was a white minister who responded to Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr's call for clergy to travel to Selma, Alabama in 1965 in support of voting rights.

Once in Selma, Olsen joined other ministers who had come to support the cause. As he and colleagues were walking to Brown Chapel, his friend Reverend Jim Reeb was attacked by white supremacists and died 2 days later. Rev. Olsen testified at a trial in which three men were acquitted by an all-white jury.

According to the NY Times, "the killing shocked the nation and helped President Lyndon B. Johnson push forward with the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was signed into law that August."

"In his talks and writings about the killing, Mr. Olsen often noted with dismay that it seemed to take the death of a white minister to spur action on the Voting Rights Bill — not the killing of a black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson, the month before." NY Times. 

Listen as two of Rev. Olsen's friends, Jeff Steinberg - Executive Director of Sojourn to the Past and Minnijean Brown Trickey, member of the Little Rock Nine talk about his contributions and legacy of the movement.