What happened when Alabama State College students marched to the Alabama state capitol in 1960?

In February 1960, approximately 800 students from Alabama State College marched to the Alabama state capitol to protest the actions of Governor John Patterson, who had demanded the students' expulsion following an earlier sit-in at the Montgomery County Courthouse.

During this march, the students were assaulted by bat-wielding members of the Ku Klux Klan while state and local police stood by and allowed the violence to occur. The attack went unpunished, despite the fact that the Montgomery Advertiser published photographs of the incident that clearly identified several members of the mob. This event, along with the subsequent failure of authorities to address the violence, became a focal point for civil rights activists and was later referenced in the advertisement that led to the landmark New York Times Co. v. Sullivan Supreme Court case.1