On This Day

Today in History, March 7th

On March 7, 1965, Alabama troopers attacked voting rights marchers at Selma on Bloody Sunday. Plus Bell's telephone patent and the Rhineland.

By Today in History Updated November 10, 2026 2 min read Sources checked

Published March 7, 2026 · Last updated November 10, 2026

March 7 is best known as “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, when Alabama state troopers attacked peaceful voting rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma. The date also saw Alexander Graham Bell receive his telephone patent in 1876 and Hitler send troops into the Rhineland in 1936.

The big story: Bloody Sunday in Selma (1965)

In early 1965, Black residents of Selma, Alabama, were still being kept off the voter rolls, and tensions had boiled over after a state trooper shot and killed Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old church deacon, during a protest in a nearby town. Activists planned a 54-mile march to the state capital, Montgomery. On Sunday, March 7, about 600 people set out, led by John Lewis of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on the edge of town, state troopers and sheriff’s deputies ordered them to break up, then charged with clubs, whips and tear gas. Seventeen marchers were hospitalized, among them Lewis, then 25. Television and newspaper images of the beatings shocked the country, and protests broke out in dozens of cities within days. On March 25, Martin Luther King Jr. led about 25,000 people into Montgomery under federal protection. That August, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

More events on March 7

Year	What happened
161	Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-emperor later known for his Meditations, became emperor of Rome.
1850	Senator Daniel Webster gave a speech backing the Compromise of 1850, a package that Congress passed that September.
1862	The two-day Battle of Pea Ridge began in northwestern Arkansas, ending in a Union victory.
1876	Alexander Graham Bell received a U.S. patent for the telephone.
1923	The New Republic published Robert Frost’s poem “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”
1936	Adolf Hitler sent German troops into the demilitarized Rhineland, breaking the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Pact. Britain and France did not respond with force.
1987	Mike Tyson beat James Smith over 12 rounds to become the youngest boxer to win the WBA heavyweight title.
1999	Film director Stanley Kubrick, maker of 2001: A Space Odyssey, died in England at age 70.
2010	Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win the Academy Award for best director, for The Hurt Locker.

Born on March 7

1849: Luther Burbank, plant breeder who developed more than 800 new varieties, including the Burbank potato.
1872: Piet Mondrian, Dutch painter famous for grids of black lines and primary colors.
1875: Maurice Ravel, French composer of Boléro.