The battle for voting rights and equality did not begin or end on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. That struggle continues today through various efforts to remove barriers of voting in America and internationally. Foot Soldiers, members of the community, civil rights leaders, and survivors of the “Bloody Sunday” attack on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, founded the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute in Selma, Alabama in 1991. The Museum was opened to pay homage to the courage and strength of civil rights supporters who suffered hatred, bigotry, violence and sometimes death in order to gain the right to vote for African Americans in America.
The National Voting Rights Museum and Institute opened its doors in 1993, as a permanent memorial to the struggle to obtain voting rights in America for disenfranchised Americans. The Mission of the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute is to collect, exhibit, interpret and document images and artifacts related to the history of Selma, the Voting Rights struggle, Voting Rights in America, and the Civil Rights Movement. It is our hope and desire to expand audiences for history, to be a leader in history education and to be a premier research and educational institution through our Archival repository. As the foremost interpreter of Selma’s history, we will enable and empower the public to understand more about the City’s past and present, and to shape its future.
