For centuries, Selma was a city where the rules of race were enforced by humiliation and fear, but it became the birthplace of one of history's greatest grassroots campaigns, the voting rights movement. The Selma to Montgomery march culminated many years of hard work by courageous people who believed change would never come unless they acted, and their efforts directly led to passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965. In the 1930s, Samuel Boynton and his wife Amelia actively registered blacks in rural Alabama and founded the Dallas County Voters League, which Amelia Boynton and seven colleagues continued to run after Samuel Boynton's death in 1963. The group faced immense obstacles: in the early 1960s, 57 percent of Dallas County was African American, but only 1 percent of those over 21 were registered to vote. Their work was supported by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which organized mass meetings and registration drives in Selma churches. The beating of marchers by state troopers on Bloody Sunday focused national attention on the Selma voting rights campaign.