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🏳️🌈 Retired REALTOR® | American Studies Scholar/Educator, Tech Professional & Development Boss 🏳️🌈

Sumter County, Alabama and the Origins of the Voting Rights Act - PDF: https://lnkd.in/gJzr3vqh Civil disobedience can be categorized by the group engaging in it, the type of action taken, the policy to which the protestors object, or the type of relief sought. Is the group well defined or amorphous? Are the actors engaged in violence, non-violent but unlawful behavior, or behavior that is lawful but at odds with custom? Do the protestors object to an unlawful policy or one that is lawful but perceived as unjust? Are the protestors ' aims well defined or amorphous? Are they narrow or broad? Are they clearly linked with the policy that the protestors challenge? Civil disobedience is an inherently blunt instrument. It can communicate broad messages, but not details. The confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge is a perfect example. It originated with voter registration drives in Selma and Marion, Alabama.509 Jimmie Lee Jackson, a black demonstrator in Marion, was killed by an Alabama State Trooper.510 From the initial suggestion of a funeral cortege going from Marion to Montgomery came the idea of a Selma-Montgomery march for voting rights.511 The marchers thus knew they wanted black voting rights; the Alabama State Troopers and the Dallas County Sheriff's deputies knew they opposed black voting rights.512 Widespread television and newspaper coverage of what came to be called "Bloody Sunday" energized the nation, the President, and Congress to "do something" to ensure black voting rights.513 However, neither the marchers, nor the mounted wielders of billy clubs, nor the media reporters were communicating the details of what that "something" should be.514 Many acts of civil disobedience have resulted in remedial actions that proved to be ineffective because the unfocused nature of the actors' grievances led to unfocused or poorly implemented solutions that lacked popular support.515

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