US President Barack Obama was in Selma, Alabama on Saturday (March 7) to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a march that sparked the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
President Obama in Selma
The First Family marches across a bridge that was at the apex of where where a peaceful march for African American voting rights in Selma, Alabama, turned bloody some fifty years ago.
With ongoing racial tensions in the U.S., America’s first African American president marks the 50th anniversary of Selma …. a crucial march in civil rights history … saying the job is still unfinished.
“Fifty years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet ended, but we’re getting closer,”
Standing in front of the bridge where police beat peaceful marchers who were fighting for voting equality, Obama urges young people to learn from the lessons from that “Bloody Sunday.”
“That’s what the young people here today, and all across the country ought to take away…”, President Obama said.
That brutal day led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Georgia Congressman John Lewis was one of the original marchers..
GEORGIA DEMOCRATIC CONGRESSMAN JOHN LEWIS SAYS:
“On that day, 600 people marched into history…”
The anniversary comes at a time of renewed focus on racial disparities in the United States including discrimination among law enforcement against black citizens in parts of the United States.
But President Obama, in lockstep with civil rights activists and former president George W. Bush, carry the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement.. into a new chapter.
(Ventuno)