Retracing the Steps: Selma's 'Bloody Sunday' Marchers Recalled the Pains of the Past and of the Present By Vern Smith

March 10, 2015

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - A day after President Barack Obama walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 50th Anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" - the police assault on civil rights demonstrators that lead to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act--thousand of marchers thronged the bridge beginning in early morning and lasting into late afternoon. From 15,000 to 20,000 people participated in the event,  according to the Associated Press.

Obama was introduced on Saturday by Georgia Democratic Congressman John Lewis, an Alabama native and one of the March leaders who was injured in the "Bloody Sunday" violence. Obama praised Lewis as one of his longtime heroes.

"What they did here will reverberate through the ages," Obama said. "Not because the change they won was preordained, not because their victory was complete, but because they proved that nonviolent change is possible; that love and hope can conquer hate."

While there has been undeniable progress in the past 50 years, the struggle is far from finished, Obama said, calling the events of Selma, "one leg in our long journey toward freedom."

Obama was joined on stage by Michelle Obama, former President George W. Bush, Laura Bush, and Alabama Congresswoman Terri Sewell.

More people began arriving early Sunday morning at the foot of Broad Street just below the base of the Pettus Bridge.And by noon the crush of thousands had filled the space in preparation for the symbolic crossing.

Among the many speakers at Sunday's program at Brown Chapel AME Church, the original start point for the 1965 March, out-going attorney general Eric Holder vowed to continue his advocacy to strengthen voting rights laws even after he leaves office as the nation's first African-American attorney general.

No matter what he does, Holder said, "I will never leave this work. I will never abandon this mission. Nor can you. If we are to honor  those who came before us and those still among us, we must match their sacrifice, their effort."  With many families in the crowd, Sunday's gathering had a festive atmosphere. But the recent events involving police and unarmed Black citizens and the scathing federal report outlining institutional racism in the Ferguson, Missouri police department was on the minds of many.

Marchers carried signs protesting an end to the spate of shootings of unarmed black men by white police officers, gun violence and immigration reform.

The multi-racial, intergenerational marchers sang, kneeled, and locked arms as they retraced the first steps of a march intended to reach the State Capital in Montgomery to protest the shooting on Feb. 18, 1965 of Jimmie Lee Jackson. Jackson, a voter registration worker with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference was shot by Alabama State Trooper James Fowler as he attempted to protect his mother from a beating by state troopers after a voting rights march in Marion, Alabama. Jackson, who was unarmed, later died from his wounds in a Selma hospital.