Selma to Montgomery marches

===Response to "Bloody Sunday"===
After the march, President Johnson issued an immediate statement "deploring the brutality with which a number of Negro citizens of Alabama were treated". He also promised to send a voting rights bill to Congress that week, although it took him until March 15.<ref name="Dallek-Robert-flawed-giant-lbj-215-217">{{cite book|title=Flawed Giant Lyndon Johnson and His Times, 1961–1973|date=1999|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0199771905|location=New York|pages=215–217|last1=Dallek|first1=Robert}}</ref>

SNCC officially joined the Selma campaign, putting aside their qualms about SCLC's tactics in order to rally for "the fundamental right of protest".<ref>Taylor Branch, ''At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965–1968'' (Simon & Schuster, 2006), p. 73.</ref> SNCC members independently organized sit-ins in Washington, DC, the following day, occupying the office of Attorney General [[Nicholas Katzenbach]] until they were dragged away.<ref>Branch, ''At Canaan's Edge: America in the King Years 1965–1968'' (2006), pp. 59–65.</ref>

The executive board of the NAACP unanimously passed a resolution the day after "Bloody Sunday", warning

<blockquote>If Federal troops are not made available to protect the rights of Negroes, then the American people are faced with terrible alternatives. Like the citizens of Nazi-occupied France, Negroes must either submit to the heels of their oppressors or they must organize underground to protect themselves from the oppression of Governor Wallace and his storm troopers.<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=5lcEAAAAMBAJ&q=%E2%80%9CSelma_Outrage_Condemned%2C%E2%80%9D&pg=PA247 "Selma Outrage Condemned"], ''The Crisis'', Vol. 72, No. 4, April 1965.</ref></blockquote>

In response to "Bloody Sunday," labor leader [[Walter Reuther]] sent a telegram on March 9 to President Johnson, reading in part:

<blockquote>Americans of all religious faiths, of all political persuasions, and from every section of our Nation are deeply shocked and outraged at the tragic events in Selma Ala., and they look to the Federal Government as the only possible source to protect and guarantee the exercise of constitutional rights, which is being denied and destroyed by the Dallas County law enforcement agents and the Alabama State troops under the direction of Governor George Wallace.

Under these circumstances, Mr President, I join in urging you to take immediate and appropriate steps including the use of Federal marshals and troops if necessary, so that the full exercise of constitutional rights including free assembly and free speech be fully protected.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Congress|first=United States|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=f03LYrZHFKwC&q=reuther&pg=PA5304|title=Congressional Record: Proceedings and Debates of the ... Congress|date=1965|publisher=U.S. Government Printing Office|pages=4454|language=en}}</ref></blockquote>