Jan. 25, 1965
Annie Lee Cooper — portrayed by Oprah Winfrey in the film “Selma” — had been standing in line for hours outside the Dallas County courthouse in Selma, Alabama, once again attempting to register to vote.
Sheriff Jim Clark and his deputies appeared. The 6-foot Clark had a reputation for racism and violence, carrying a billy club and cattle prod and telling others that the only problem with his job was “all this n—– fuss here of late. … You just have to know how to handle them.” He ordered the activists to leave, despite the fact they were legally entitled to register.
Cooper recalled, “I was just standing there when his deputies told a man with us to move, and when he didn’t, they tried to kick him. That’s when (Clark), and I got into it. I try to be nonviolent, but I just can’t say I wouldn’t do the same thing all over again if they treat me brutish like they did this time.”
Clark began poking her over and over in the neck with his billy club. She finally struck back, knocking him down. Deputies attacked her, beating her with a billy club. They threw her into jail, where she began to sing spirituals.
Cooper had returned to Selma to care for her sick mother three years earlier. She had registered to vote where she lived in Kentucky and Ohio, but when she tried to register, the clerk told her she failed the test. She kept trying and joined SNCC’s first Freedom Day, where she waited with 400 others to register to vote in fall 1963. She was fired from her job and struck with a cattle prod. And after she was jailed in 1965, she never gave up.
The Voting Rights Act passed Congress, and she was able to vote. She lived to be 100, and the city of Selma named a street after her. Winfrey said she decided to portray Cooper because of “what her courage meant to an entire movement. Having people look at you and not see you as a human being — she just got tired of it.”
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