SELMA, Ala. — Over six decades after the infamous clash on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where state troopers assaulted Civil Rights activists, thousands are congregating in Selma, Alabama, this weekend. This gathering comes amid fresh apprehensions surrounding the Voting Rights Act’s future.
The brutal events of March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday, stunned the nation and played a crucial role in the enactment of historic legislation that dismantled voting barriers for Black Americans in the South during the Jim Crow era.
This year’s commemorative events, spanning the entire weekend and culminating in a symbolic march across the bridge on Sunday, occur as the U.S. Supreme Court deliberates a case that might restrict a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. This provision has been instrumental in ensuring minority voters can elect their preferred candidates by influencing the drawing of congressional and local districts.
Charles Mauldin, now 78 and a participant in the original march, voiced his concerns, stating, “I’m worried that all the progress achieved over the last 61 years could be undone.”
The Supreme Court is soon expected to deliver a verdict on a Louisiana case that examines the role of race in mapping congressional districts. Any decision curtailing this role could have far-reaching impacts, potentially allowing Republican-led states to redraw districts and diminish the influence of majority Black and Latino areas, which typically lean Democratic.
Democratic leaders, civil rights advocates, and others have flocked to the Southern city to honor this monumental moment in the Civil Rights Movement and to rally for continued activism. Organizers stress that, much like the original marchers on Bloody Sunday, the fight for rights must persist.
Former state Sen. Hank Sanders, who helped start the annual commemoration, said the 1965 events in Selma marked a turning point in the nation and helped push the United States closer to becoming a true democracy.
“The feeling is a profound fear that we will be taken back – a greater fear than at any time since 1965,” Sanders said.
U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures won election in 2024 to an Alabama district that was redrawn by the federal court. He said what happened in Selma and the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act “was monumental in shaping what America looks like and how America is represented in Congress.”
“I think coming to Selma is a refreshing reminder every single year that the progress that we got from the Civil Rights Movement is not perpetual. It’s been under consistent attacks almost since we’ve gotten those rights,” Figures said.
In 1965, the Bloody Sunday marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams walked in pairs across the Selma bridge headed toward Montgomery. Mauldin, then 17, was part of the third pair behind Williams and Lewis.
At the apex of the bridge, they could see the sea of law enforcement officers, including some on horseback, waiting for them. But they kept going. “Being fearful was not an option. And it wasn’t that we didn’t have fear, it’s that we chose courage over fear,” Mauldin recalled in a telephone interview.
“We were all hit. We were trampled. We were tear-gassed. And we were brutalized by the state of Alabama,” Mauldin said.
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