Selma

City and administrative headquarters of Dallas County, south-central Alabama, 70 km/43 mi west of Montgomery, on the Alabama River; population (1990) 23,800. A shipping and market centre for local farms, it houses cotton gins and meatpacking plants, and manufactures farm equipment, lawnmowers, bricks, and cigars.

It is the seat of Selma University (1878) and Concordia College (1922).

History Settled in 1815, it served as a major Confederate arsenal, foundry, and supply depot during the American Civil War, and was burned by Union troops following a battle outside the city on 2 April 1865. After the Civil War, agriculture and industry diversified.

In early 1965 a black voter registration drive in the city was met with violence, and on 7 March a protest march to Montgomery was violently suppressed on the far side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, across the Alabama. Civil-rights activists then marched from Selma to Montgomery, with the Rev Martin Luther King, Jr, on 21–25 March.

Selma

City in south-central California, in the San Joaquin Valley, 24 km/15 mi southeast of Fresno; population (1990) 14,800. It is a processing centre for grapes and other local produce.

Selma

Town in central North Carolina, near the Neuse River, 45 km/28 mi southeast of Raleigh; population (1990) 4,600. A trade and manufacturing centre and rail junction, it produces textiles, fertilizer, cottonseed oil, timber, and wine.

There is a state prison to the northwest.