Despite the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, politicians in several Southern states made it difficult for Blacks to vote. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  is frustrated when he observes how thousands of Black citizens in Alabama were not permitted to vote. Defying segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace, and the safety  concerns of his wife Coretta, King organizes a 50-mile march from Selma to the state capital in Montgomery. On March 7, 1965, President Johnson watches on television as state troopers attack the marchers with clubs, horses, dogs, and tear gas. A furious President Johnson speaks before a Joint Session of Congress requesting quick passage of a bill that would eliminate any restrictions for a citizen to vote.  The result was the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.