Alabama State Troopers beat John Lewis, then a young SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) leader, now a longtime member of Congress, on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965. Because of the steep pitch of the bridge, the 600 marchers, protesting the murder by a state trooper of Jimmy Lee Jackson, couldn’t see the attack awaiting them on the other side. Troopers beat them with clubs and trampled them with horses.