March 21st, 1965

 

Civil rights demonstrators led by dr. Martin Luther King Junior begin a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. It happens weeks after marchers pushing for black voting rights in the South are attacked in Selma. The marches lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act months later.

 

1960，

 

In South Africa， police fire on a crowd of blacks in what becomes known as the Sharpeville Massacre. Some 70 people are killed, more than 180 wounded during this bloody chapter in that country's apartheid years.

 

1989,

 

Randall Dale Adams is released from a Texas prison, following a dozen years behind bars for a crime he did not commit. Adams' conviction for killing a police officer was overturned after the documentary “The Thin Blue Line” challenged the evidence.

 

And 1685,

 

Composer and organist Johann Sebastian Bach is born in Germany.

 

Today in history, March 21st, Ross Simpson the Associated Press.