Today in history

March 11

1930
Gandhi’s Salt March began from Ahmadabad with 76 followers to protest the salt tax. By the time they had covered the 241 miles to the coastal city of Dandi on the Arabian sea, their numbers had grown into the thousands. Two months later, in May 1930, Mahatma Gandhi was imprisoned for his incitement against the British monopoly on salt.
It was illegal for anyone other than the British government to manufacture or sell salt in India.

A simple act of making salt shakes the British Empire.

1965
The Rev. James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston, was among many white clergyman who joined the Selma marchers after the attack by state troopers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Reeb was beaten to death by white men while he walked down a Selma, Ala. street.

1968
Cesar Chavez ended a 23-day fast for U.S. farm workers
in Delano, California’s public park with 4,000 supporters at his side, including Senator Robert Kennedy. Cesar Chavez led the effort to organize Farm Workers into a union for better working conditions.

1988
10 days of protest at Nevada Test Site began which resulted in over 2,200 arrests, the largest number of arrests at a political protest outside Washington, D.C. in U.S. history.