Although African Americans were guaranteed the right to vote by the constitution, many in the south were being denied that right. During the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s black voting rights activists had been beaten and killed but it was events in Selma Alabama in 1965 that outraged many Americans. In March 1965 hundreds of peaceful protesters were brutally beaten by Alabama state troops as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Photo President Lyndon Johnson hands a souvenir pen to the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr after signing the Voting Rights Bill at the US Capital, Washington DC, August 1965. Credit Getty Images.