Civil rights activist Jimmy Lee Jackson (1938-1965) was a Jimmy Lee Jackson tragic death at 26 years old at the hands of an Alabama state trooper during a small protest in Marion, Perry County. His death was eulogized by Martin Luther King Jr., and other movement leaders called for a march from Selma to Montgomery to protest Jackson’s death and advocate for voting rights. That March 7 event ended prematurely with a violent response from law enforcement that quickly became known as “Bloody Sunday,” but it prompted federal lawmakers to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Jimmy Lee Jackson, born in Marion, was a farmer and woodcutter who lived in poverty with his sister, mother, and grandfather in a house with no running water. Jackson was the youngest deacon in the history of Marion’s St. James Baptist Church and was active in its voter registration drive. On the night of February 18, 1965, Jimmy Lee Jackson became a martyr in the civil rights movement when he joined a group of African Ame