50 years ago on March 7th 1965, US society's racial intolerance was put to the sword in a triumph of the human spirit. Now known as Bloody Sunday, 600 civil rights marchers headed east out of Selma Alabama towards the state capital Montgomery, along U.S. Route 80. They got as far as the Edmund Pettus Bridge when state and local lawmen attacked them with billy clubs and tear gas, driving them back into Selma.
In front of an open mouthed world, about 3,200 marchers set out again for Montgomery on March 21st - walking 12 miles a day and sleeping in fields. By the time they reached the capitol they were 25,000 strong. Less than five months after these marches, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
In a positive celebration of the social changes that took place after this event, Barbara Mason's classic teenage love ballad of the same year - re-worked in 2005 by legendary disco producer Tom Moulton - plays out as background.

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