Thirty-eight years ago this week, four Amherst students were jailed while participating in the Alabama Rights March. The 50-mile march, starting in Selma and ending in Montgomery, was a demonstration for voting rights in the 1965 black voter registration campaign. The marchers attempted to peacefully picket the capitol but were driven back by police brandishing sticks, ropes and bullwhips. The four Amherst students, along with four others from the Amherst area including a Smith faculty member, were arrested for "failure to obey a police officer."

All of the demonstrators were determined to accomplish their goal, reaching the state capitol and demanding voter registration for blacks. Speakers such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and James Foreman, executive secretary of the SNCC, encouraged the marchers:they guided discussions, chanted slogans, held picket signs and led songs such as "We Shall Overcome."

Despite police attempts to clear the streets with motorcycles, horses and tear gas, the marchers refused to disperse. Some demonstrators picked up bricks, stones and bottles for self-defense. In the resulting confrontations, police motorcycles hit a few marchers and many suffered cuts and bruises. Amherst student and demonstrator Fritz Kraai '65 (pictured, top left) had to get four stitches in his head from a police-inflicted injury. Demonstrators accused the police of "brutality and unfairness."

Marchers who refused to disperse were arrested. The jailed protesters, demonstrating for desegregation, were segregated in prison into separate black and white cells. Many of the marchers were also on a hunger strike and sat in prison with very little energy. The 230 jailed demonstrators were all released on bond with money collected by the end of the march; the Amherst-area demonstrators were released on bonds costing between $100 and $300.

On campus, throughout the days of the march, Amherst students and professors debated the effectiveness of the demonstrations, the prevalence of police brutality and the civil rights issues themselves.