--- title: The March on Washington: John Lewis | TIME description: John Lewis shares stories from the aftermath of the March on Washington, and how Selma became the stage for African Americans to fight for their right to vote, leading to the Selma to Montgomery marches. canonical: https://time.com/video/uo7mPUXm/ og:title: The March on Washington: John Lewis og:description: John Lewis shares stories from the aftermath of the March on Washington, and how Selma became the stage for African Americans to fight for their right to vote, leading to the Selma to Montgomery marches. og:url: https://time.com/video/uo7mPUXm/ og:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uo7mPUXm/poster.jpg?width=720 og:type: video.other twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The March on Washington: John Lewis twitter:description: John Lewis shares stories from the aftermath of the March on Washington, and how Selma became the stage for African Americans to fight for their right to vote, leading to the Selma to Montgomery marches. twitter:image: https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uo7mPUXm/poster.jpg?width=720 --- # The March on Washington: John Lewis > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: The March on Washington: John Lewis [Watch (HLS stream): The March on Washington: John Lewis](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uo7mPUXm.m3u8) (5:57)  _Published 2013-08-13. John Lewis shares stories from the aftermath of the March on Washington, and how Selma became the stage for African Americans to fight for their right to vote, leading to the Selma to Montgomery marches._ --- Mar 13, 2024 2:10 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Rep. John Lewis Introduces President Obama In Selma](/video/X8RTUrrf/) ### Rep. John Lewis Introduces President Obama In Selma [John Lewis Speaks on 50th Anniversary of Selma March](/video/x93Kcs0q/) ### John Lewis Speaks on 50th Anniversary of Selma March [The March on Washington: John Lewis's Speech](/video/4otTU91S/) ### The March on Washington: John Lewis's Speech --- ## Transcript There was so much hope, so much optimism after the March on Washington. When people laughed 'cause Dr. King suggested we went back home, back to the heart of the deep South. So, many of us went into the state of Mississippi. We went into Alabama. We went to Selma. In Selma, only 2. 1 percent of African- American were registered to vote. The only time you could even attempt to register to vote was the first and third Mondays of each month. You have to stand in line, get a copy of the so- called literacy test, and hundreds and thousand of people will fail the so- called literacy test. They were told they could not read or write well enough-- African- American lawyers, doctors, teachers. So, we started a series of demonstration, standing in line at the court house. One evening, there was a demonstration for the right to vote nearby Selma. Confrontation occurred and a young man tried to protect his mother. He was shot in the stomach, and a few days later, he died at a local hospital in Selma. We made a decision to attempt to march from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize to the nation and to the world that people of color wanting to register to vote. We started walking. I was one of the leaders of that effort. I was wearing a backpack before it became fashionable to wear backpacks. In this backpack, I had two books. I thought we were gonna be arrested and that we were gonna go to jail, so I wanted to have something to read in jail. I wanted to have something to eat in that backpack. I had an apple and I had an orange since I thought we were gonna be arrested and go to jail and I'd be in jail with my friends, my colleagues, and neighbors. I wanted to be able to brush my teeth. I had toothpaste and toothbrush. We get to the highest point on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Down below, we saw a sea of blue, Alabama State Troopers. We continued to walk. We came within hearing distance of the state troopers. And a man spoke up and said, " I'm Major John Claude of the Alabama State Troopers. This is an unlawful march. It will not be allowed to continue. I give you three minutes to disperse and return to your homes or to your church. And a young man walking beside me by the name of Jose Williams, from Dr. King's organization, said, " Major, give us a moment to kneel and pray ." Before we can pass the word back for people to kneel and pray, the major said, " Troopers advance ." And you saw these men putting on their gas masks. They came toward us, beating us with nightsticks, trampling us with horses, releasing the tear gas. I was hit in the head by a state trooper with a nightstick. My legs went from under me. I thought I saw death. I thought I was going to die. I thought it was the last nonviolent protest for me. I don't recall how I made it back across that bridge, across the Alabama River through the streets of Selma, back to that little church. But I do recall being back at the church. It was full to capacity. More than 2000 people on the outside were trying to get in to protest what had happened. Someone asked me to say something and I stood up and said something like, " I don't understand it, how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam and cannot send troops to Selma, Alabama to protect people who only desires to register to vote ." And the next thing I knew, I had been admitted to the Good Samaritan Hospital there in Selma, Alabama with 16 other people. And the next morning, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his colleague, Reverend Ralph Abernathy, came to visit us in the hospital. And Dr. King said, " Don't Worry. We will make it from Selma to Montgomery and we get the Voting Rights Act passed ." And he told us that he had urged religious leaders to come to Selma. So, on Tuesday, March 9th, more than a thousand ministers, priests, rabbis, and nuns came to Selma and they marched to the point where we had been beaten two days earlier. That Tuesday night, one of the young minister went out with two others to find something to eat, and on their way back from [ unk ], they were attacked by members of the Klan. This young minster, James Reed, was from Boston. He was so severely beaten. He was taken to the hospital in Birmingham, Alabama where he died two days later. Selma gave us the Voting Rights Act, the way Birmingham gave us the Civil Rights Act and the March on Washington gave us the Civil Rights Act. If it hadn't been for Selma, hadn't been for the March on Washington, we wouldn't be for real today and there will be no Barack Obama as president of the United States of America. ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"The March on Washington: John Lewis","description":"John Lewis shares stories from the aftermath of the March on Washington, and how Selma became the stage for African Americans to fight for their right to vote, leading to the Selma to Montgomery marches.","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/uo7mPUXm/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2013-08-13T14:32:00.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/uo7mPUXm.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/video/uo7mPUXm/","duration":"PT5M57S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/video/uo7mPUXm/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}} ```