Jimmie Lee Jackson was born in 1938 and died in 1965. He was born in Marion, Alabama and his family was very poor. His childhood was really rough because his parents went though a lot of trouble to vote and they were beaten really badly.

Jimmie Lee Jackson got in the Civil Rights Movement when he saw his old grandfather, who was 80 years old, rudely turned away from the registrarís office. Jimmie became angry because he saw how the white people were treating them and he thought they should be treated equally.

He showed courage when he joined the movement even though he knew that he could get beaten or get killed. He also was the leader in his church. Lee was the youngest deacon at church and they gave him an award because he was 25 years old.

Jimmie died because he tried to save his family from a mob of police officers that were going to beat them up because they were marching in the Civil Rights Movement. They were marching for their voting rights in Selma. A minister got hit in the head when he knelt down to pray, then Jimmie and his family went inside a store and they thought they had got away from the mob but they hadn't. The mob came in the store and started beating up people.

Jimmie tried to get his family out, then one of the people in the mob clubbed him across the face. They threw him into a cigarette machine then when he fell to the floor one trooper pulled out his pistol and shot him in the stomach. The officer continued to beat him when he ran out of the store and eventually collapsed. It was about two hours before Jimmie arrived at the Good Samaritan Hospital in Selma. He died eight days later. Jackson's killer was never publicly identified and no charges were ever brought. Three days before Jackson's death, the Alabama state legislature passed a resolution supporting the state troopers' actions in Marion.

When Jimmie died, a lot of Civil Rights leaders like Martin Luther King and others marched to Montgomery, AL from Selma, AL to protest Lee's death. After the Selma March, two other Civil Rights workers were dead. Their names were James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo. They made voting rights important to the nation. After three months, Congress passed a Voting Rights Bill and black people began to vote.

Malcolm Barrow