Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1963 and 1964, civil rights groups in Selma, Alabama had been trying to sign African-American people up to vote, but they had not been able to.  At the time, 99% of the people signed up to vote in Selma were white.  However, the government workers who signed up voters were all white.  They refused to sign up African-Americans.  In January 1965, these civil rights groups asked King and the SCLC to help them.  Together, they started working on voting rights.  However, the next month, an African-American man named Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by a police officer during a peaceful march.  Jackson died.pp. 121–123  Many African-American people were very angry.