DOTD For Wednesday, March 25, 2026
A Drink To Honor Those Who Walked, So We Could Run
Today’s DOTD - Drink Of The Day - is a Classic Screwdriver cocktail/mocktail inspired by MLK Jr. finishing the walk from Selma to Montgomery, on this date, March 25, 1965.
On March 25, 1965, Martin Luther King led thousands of nonviolent demonstrators to the steps of the capitol in Montgomery, Alabama, after a 5-day, 54-mile march from Selma, Alabama, where local African Americans, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) had been campaigning for voting rights. King told the assembled crowd: “There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring than the pilgrimage of clergymen and laymen of every race and faith pouring into Selma to face danger at the side of its embattled Negroes” .
Selma to Montgomery March
The Selma to Montgomery march was part of a series of civil rights protests that occurred in 1965 in Alabama, a Southern state with deeply entrenched racist policies. In March of that year, in an effort to register Black voters in the South, protesters marching the 54-mile route from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery were confronted with deadly violence from local authorities and white vigilante groups. As the world watched, the protesters—under the protection of federalized National Guard troops—finally achieved their goal, walking around the clock for three days to reach Montgomery, Alabama. The historic march, and Martin Luther King Jr.’s participation in it, raised awareness of the difficulties faced by Black voters, and the need for a national Voting Rights Act.
On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, Black and white, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked again by state troopers. King paused the marchers and led them in prayer, whereupon the troopers stepped aside.
King then turned the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to create an opportunity that would allow them to enforce a federal injunction prohibiting the march. This decision led to criticism from some marchers, who called King cowardly.
That night, a group of segregationists attacked another protester; the young white minister James Reeb, beating him to death. Alabama state officials (led by Wallace) tried to prevent the march from going forward, but a U.S. district court judge ordered them to permit it.
James Reeb marching with Ralph Abernathy, Martin Luther King Jr., Coretta Scott King, and others.
LBJ Addresses Nation
Six days later, on March 15, President Lyndon B. Johnson went on national television to pledge his support to the Selma protesters and to call for the passage of a new voting rights bill that he was introducing in Congress.
“There is no Negro problem. There is no Southern problem. There is no Northern problem. There is only an American problem,” Johnson said, “Their cause must be our cause too. Because it is not just Negros, but really it is all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”
Some 2,000 people set out from Selma on March 21, protected by U.S. Army troops and Alabama National Guard forces that Johnson had ordered under federal control. After walking some 12 hours a day and sleeping in fields along the way, they reached Montgomery on March 25.
Nearly 50,000 supporters—Black and white—met the marchers in Montgomery, where they gathered in front of the state capitol to hear King and other speakers including Ralph Bunche - winner of the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize - address the crowd.
“No tide of racism can stop us,” King proclaimed from the building’s steps, as viewers from around the world watched the historic moment on television.
Lasting Impact of The March
On March 17, 1965, even as the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers fought for the right to carry out their protest, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for federal voting rights legislation to protect African Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting.
That August, Congress passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed the right to vote (first awarded by the 15th Amendment) to all African Americans. Specifically, the act banned literacy tests as a requirement for voting, mandated federal oversight of voter registration in areas where tests had previously been used, and gave the U.S. Attorney General the duty of challenging the use of poll taxes for state and local elections.
Along with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act was one of the most expansive pieces of civil rights legislation in American history. It greatly reduced the disparity between Black and white voters in the U.S. and allowed greater numbers of African Americans to participate in politics and government at the local, state and national level.
Given how Republicans are once again trying to steal the right to vote, at the same time the illegitimate right-wing extremists on the Supreme Court are also trying to curtail the right to vote, highlighting Dr. King’s efforts to secure the right to vote for all seems very fitting today.
As for today’s choice of cocktail/mocktail - the Classic Screwdriver - for today’s Drink Of The Day? Many sources across the internet claim that this was Rev. King’s favorite drink - but there’s no proof of that anywhere. However, based on the research of Dr. Frederick Douglass Opie, Professor of History and the Baldwin Richardson Foods Chair at Babson College, and the research done by celebrity chef & restauranteur Marcus Samuelsson, we tend to believe that’s correct. Dr. King was a complex man who enjoyed the simple pleasures of well-made simple Southern food and drink. And the Classic Screwdriver certainly fits that bill.
Ingredients
Here’s what you’re going to need for this drink:
