On this day in 1965, a white minister from Boston lay near death in an Alabama hospital. As James Reeb's life slipped away, his story was in every morning paper and on every evening news program. Deeply committed to the non-violent struggle for civil rights, he had gone to Selma, Alabama, in response to an appeal from Martin Luther King, Jr. On March 9^th, he was viciously attacked by men opposed to civil rights. When Reeb died two days later at the age of 38, President Lyndon Johnson called it "an American tragedy." His death helped turn the tide of public opinion in favor of federal legislation to guarantee voting rights for the country's black citizens.