Bloody Sundays: Violence against peaceful protesters from Selma to Belfast
How long must we sing this song?
President Barack Obama is scheduled to visit Selma, Ala., on Saturday, March 7, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.
On that day in 1965, Alabama state troopers and local police used tear gas and billy clubs to attack a gathering of roughly 600 nonviolent protesters near the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a march from Selma to Montgomery.
The crowd of men and women of all ages were fighting for African-Americans' right to vote.
Activists organized the march in response to the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot and killed by an Alabama state trooper during another peaceful protest the previous month.
Televised footage of the Bloody Sunday violence galvanized supporters of civil rights and ultimately led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act in August of that year. This landmark piece of federal legislation prohibits racial discrimination in voting.
“Bloody Sunday is sacred. It’s sacred because of the blood shed in the struggle engaged in all on a holy day,” Democratic state Sen. Hank Sanders, who represents the district, said in an interview with Yahoo News.
Sanders says he has participated in the commemoration of that watershed moment every year for the past 40 years.
Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland
Several dates throughout history have been given the same name — Bloody Sunday — most involving authorities resorting to violence to disperse peaceful, unarmed protesters.
Perhaps the most widespread use of the phrase refers to an incident on Jan. 30, 1972, in Derry, Northern Ireland, during the conflict known as the Troubles.
British soldiers opened fire on 26 unarmed civilians during a rally against internment, killing 14 people. Some were shot while fleeing; others, while helping the wounded.
The 2010 Saville Report, the result of a 12-year investigation into the incident, shows that the British Army gave no warning before firing and that some soldiers gave false accounts to justify their actions.
U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron subsequently apologized to the Irish people on behalf of Great Britain.
“There is no doubt, there is nothing equivocal, there are no ambiguities,” Cameron said before the House of Commons. “What happened on Bloody Sunday was both unjustified and unjustifiable. It was wrong.”
Crowds gathered at Guildhall Square in Derry broke into applause as Cameron delivered the results of the inquiry.
Russia
The name Bloody Sunday is also used in reference to a violent encounter between unarmed protesters and Imperial Russian soldiers on Jan. 22, 1905, in St. Petersburg.
The massacre ushered in the violence of the Russian Revolution of 1905, which posed a significant threat to the czarist dictatorship.
Crowds of disgruntled industrial workers holding religious symbols gathered outside Emperor Nicholas II’s Winter Palace in St. Petersburg to air their grievances.
Grand Duke Vladimir, the chief of the security police and the emperor’s uncle, ordered the police to shoot the workers when he could not stop their march.
More than 100 people were killed, and hundreds were wounded.
In response to the bloodshed, riots and protests erupted across the country and Nicholas promised to work toward some democratic reforms by forming "Dumas," elected legislative assemblies.
But turmoil and anger continued to brew until the Russian Revolution of 1917 overthrew the government — ushering in nearly a century of communism.
Other Bloody Sundays
Washington state's Bloody Sunday on Nov. 5, 1916, also known as the Everett Massacre, stemmed from a confrontation between members of the Industrial Workers of the World union and local authorities.
There were two Bloody Sundays — on Nov. 21, 1920, and July 10, 1921 — during the Irish War of Independence.
Nazis murdered between 10,000 and 12,000 Jews on Oct. 12, 1941, in the Stanisławów Ghetto in Poland.
And there was even a Bloody Sunday in the 19th century, on Nov. 13, 1887, when police charged a crowd of poor protesters in London.
The legacy of Bloody Sunday in Alabama
Two days after the Bloody Sunday of Selma, Martin Luther King Jr. organized another protest during which police yet again violently opposed peaceful demonstrators.
A third attempt on March 25 attracted some 3,200 participants in Selma and picked up about 22,000 more on their way to Montgomery.
The courage of King and the other marchers inspired countless men and women across the nation to demand black rights through civil disobedience.
Of all those marches, Bloody Sunday is the one that lives on in our cultural memory.
Sanders says the 50th is especially important not just to commemorate the events of that day but to “rededicate ourselves to fully restoring the Voting Rights Act.”
He argues that voting rights have been under deliberate attack ever since then President Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation into law half a century ago — and hopes Saturday's anniversary will help keep the issue in the spotlight.
“There will be hundreds of elected officials, thousands of leaders and tens of thousands of people here on this sacred pilgrimage."
