At The St. Jude Concert in 1965: The Late Tony Bennett

   

When the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers spent their last night at the City Of Saint Jude in Montgomery, leaving the next morning for the walk to the Alabama State Capitol, they were entertained by  Peter Paul & Mary, Ella Fitzgerald, Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Sammy Davis Jr., Mahalia Jackson and Tony Bennett, who died yesterday at the age of 97. He had also walked some of the march itself.

 This is a National Park Service posting about that night:

 

 

 From Bennett's1988 autobiography The Good Life:

"When the march started, I had a strange sense of déjà vu," the singer wrote. "I kept flashing back to a time twenty years earlier when my buddies and I had fought our way into Germany." 

"It felt the same way down in Selma: the white state troopers were really hostile, and they were not shy about showing it...there was the threat of violence all along the march route, from Montgomery to Selma, some of which was broadcast on the nightly news and really helped to make the country aware of the ugliness that was still going on in the South."

 R.I.P. Mr. Bennett.