In the 1960's, huge numbers of Black Americans were not registered to vote, due to the power of local voter registrars. In 1965, Selma , Alabama was chosen as the starting point of a Civil Rights march to the state capital, Montgomery . The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. gathered with 3,200 supporters at Brown Chapel, AME, shaded by this Live Oak Tree, and they peacefully marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge , toward Montgomery . Their ranks swelled to over 25,000 in the final stretch to the Capitol, four days later .