article_snippet: The voting rights movement in the South, led by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., coupled with the assassination of Malcolm X that February, had re-energized her appetite for direct political action.
article_snippet: A peaceful throng of voting rights activists had marched onto the steel-arched Edmund Pettus Bridge that spanned the Alabama River, only to be brutally assaulted by police and Alabama state troopers, most of A peaceful throng of voting rights activists wearing gas masks.
article_snippet: Before being arrested and beaten these protesters had been headed to the state capital in Montgomery, a distance of 54 miles, to demand federal protection of blacks' right to vote.
article_snippet: And yes -- they were integrated. ...
article_snippet: There was too much white hatred still in Montgomery to feel victorious.
article_snippet: America was still poisoned by the curse of institutional racism.
article_snippet: The fight for voting rights was just beginning.
article_snippet: True ballot-box equality was still a long way off.
article_snippet: Even after President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that summer, Parks remained somewhat skeptical.
article_snippet: But the recent egregious findings of the Department of Justice following the Michael Brown case as well as other incidents resulting in the deaths of unarmed men of color still give us reason to pause.