Jimmie Lee Jackson is a little known name. He is an African American who took part in the civil rights movement and came to be its first martyr. This article published in USA TODAY is by Javonte Anderson. Here is an excerpt:

Fists. Feet. Nightsticks. Bottles. Cattle prods. And a single shot from an Alabama state trooper’s revolver that ripped through [Jimmie Lee] Jackson’s stomach as he tried to shield his mother from the attacks.

His death eight days later altered the course of American history. It united activists in Marion and Selma, making their combined campaigns for desegregation and voting rights powerful enough to resonate around the world.

Yet Jackson’s name is little more than a footnote in time. 

“It was the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson that provoked the march from Selma to Montgomery,” said John Lewis, a civil rights icon and U.S. congressman, in 2007. “It was his death and his blood that gave us the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

Read the full article here.