Which event during the Civil Rights era exposed brutality against peaceful protesters and helped galvanize support for voting rights legislation?

• A. A protest in Birmingham to desegregate schools.
• B. A sit-in at a diner in Nashville.
• C. A march in Washington focusing on labor rights.
• D. The Selma march brutality known as Bloody Sunday that boosted support for voting rights legislation.

Answer: (D)

This item examines how visible, brutal repression of peaceful protesters can ignite national outrage and push voting-rights reform. The Selma to Montgomery marches culminated in Bloody Sunday, when peaceful marchers were violently attacked on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965. The televised images and stories of police brutality against nonviolent activists shocked many Americans and lawmakers, creating widespread pressure for change. That momentum helped galvanize support for the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it possible to overcome fierce resistance and pass a landmark federal law protecting African Americans’ right to vote.

Other events in the era were crucial for civil rights progress—such as efforts to desegregate schools in Birmingham or lunch-counter sit-ins in Nashville, which targeted segregation in everyday life, and the 1963 Washington March for Jobs and Freedom, which emphasized broader civil rights goals. But the specific link between brutal suppression of peaceful protesters and a surge in support for voting-rights legislation points most directly to the Bloody Sunday events in Selma.