This Day in Black History: Jan. 2, 1965

On Jan. 2, 1965, Martin Luther King Jr. led a voting registration drive to oppose discriminatory voting restrictions designed to block Blacks in Selma, Alabama, from voting.

King was joined by the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the campaign would be the impetus for a series of marches from Selma to the state’s capital of Montgomery.

In the end, the group’s effort would convince President Lyndon B. Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which bans racial discrimination in voting practices by the federal, state and local governments.