Initially, women, people of color, and most white men who had fought in the American Revolution for independence and democracy could not vote.  The reality of democracy was slowly harvested by movements of people over a span of 300 years.  The Museum co-founded by participants of the 1965 voting rights movement, makes this movement activity its centerpiece.  From the moment Crispus Attucks, a runaway enslaved African, gave his life protecting a white citizen from the British army, the seeds of democracy were planted deep and wide in the soil of this fledgling nation.  These seeds, however, did not reach full fruition until 1965, when marchers were brutally beating on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama while peaceably fighting for the right to vote, following the death of Jimmy Lee Jackson, a young Vietnam veteran.  This event stirred the hears and conscience of America and moved President Johnson to sign the Voting Rights Act on August 6, 1965. back