The second demonstration in Selma also failed to make it across the bridge. But the third march, in which up to eight thousand people from all over the United States participated—white, black, indigenous, Latino, Catholic, Protestant, and Jewish—the protesters managed to cross the bridge. During the five days that followed, they continued to march over fifty miles to Montgomery. When the march finally reached Alabama’s capital, it had swelled to twenty-five thousand participants. Martin Luther King stood on the stairs to the imposing white capitol building and spoke. The sun burns our necks
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