'Bloody Sunday' Anniversary Commemorated With March Across Selma Bridge A reenactment of the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, was planned for Sunday as part of a weekend of events commemorating the 50th anniversary of a turning point in the civil rights movement.
Some of those gathered in Selma were also preparing to set out Monday on a march to Montgomery along the route that Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers walked in the wake of Bloody Sunday, a march that helped spur the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
President Barack Obama visited Selma on Saturday and, in acknowledgement of ongoing racial tension and attempts to limit voting rights, declared the work of the U.S. civil rights movement advanced but unfinished.
"Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished, but we're getting closer," said Obama, the first black president of the United States, as he stood near the bridge.
The anniversary comes at a time of renewed focus on racial disparities in the United States and anger over law enforcers' treatment of black civilians, among them 18-year-old Michael Brown, whose killing by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last year sparked widespread protests.
On Friday, Tony T. Robinson Jr., a 19-year-old black man who appeared to be unarmed was shot dead by a white police officer in Madison, Wisconsin, sparking protests there.
U.S. Representative John Lewis, who led the march across the bridge 50 years ago and was knocked out by a state trooper's beating, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that what happened that day had led to lasting changes in civil rights.
"When I go back, I remember the bridge for me is almost a sacred place," the Georgia Democrat said. "That's where some of us gave a little blood and where some people almost died.
"What happened on that bridge has changed America forever." (Reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in New Orleans; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Some of those gathered in Selma were also preparing to set out Monday on a march to Montgomery along the route that Martin Luther King Jr. and his followers walked in the wake of Bloody Sunday, a march that helped spur the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
President Barack Obama visited Selma on Saturday and, in acknowledgement of ongoing racial tension and attempts to limit voting rights, declared the work of the U.S. civil rights movement advanced but unfinished.
"Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished, but we're getting closer," said Obama, the first black president of the United States, as he stood near the bridge.
The anniversary comes at a time of renewed focus on racial disparities in the United States and anger over law enforcers' treatment of black civilians, among them 18-year-old Michael Brown, whose killing by a white police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, last year sparked widespread protests.
On Friday, Tony T. Robinson Jr., a 19-year-old black man who appeared to be unarmed was shot dead by a white police officer in Madison, Wisconsin, sparking protests there.
U.S. Representative John Lewis, who led the march across the bridge 50 years ago and was knocked out by a state trooper's beating, told NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday that what happened that day had led to lasting changes in civil rights.
"When I go back, I remember the bridge for me is almost a sacred place," the Georgia Democrat said. "That's where some of us gave a little blood and where some people almost died.
"What happened on that bridge has changed America forever." (Reporting by Jonathan Kaminsky in New Orleans; Additional reporting by Timothy Gardner in Washington; Editing by Gareth Jones)
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