In March 1965, the George Washington Carver neighborhood in Selma served as a base camp for the voting rights movement during tumultuous weeks. These blocks of brick two-story homes, the city's first and largest federal housing project for blacks, built in 1951, were headquarters for many civil rights workers. Residents offered spare rooms and cooked extra meals for strangers from out of town, many of them white, who joined the cause. Martin Luther King, Jr. Street was then still the unpaved Sylvan Street, where expectant marchers stood day after day in the dust and mud awaiting instructions from movement leaders. The neighborhood's people included school teachers, beauticians, undertakers, housewives, men, women, and children from every walk of black life in Selma. In March 1965, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed a large rally of supporters at the George Washington Carver Project in Selma.