Friends,

I grew up in Selma, Alabama -- the heart of Alabama's Black Belt. Growing up as a Black girl in the Deep South, you learn a lot about perseverance.

Below is a story about how my upbringing, the legacy of my hometown, and the resilience of activists today inspire me to keep fighting for change in Congress. But first, if you would like to chip in to help my re-election campaign -- please click here →

The struggles of my hometown are in my DNA. As a third-generation Selmian, my grandmother was a hard-working seamstress and housemaid who never let her family go without. My father, a basketball coach, and my mother, a librarian and the first Black woman elected to the Selma City Council, stood tall in the face of a still-segregated Selma for many years.

My Selma was fully integrated. It nurtured me. It inspired me to follow my dreams.

The progress I lived was thanks to the Foot Soldiers of the Voting Rights Movement who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, daring to confront a wall of Alabama State Troopers and the centuries of oppression from their rights as individuals with a voice and a vote.

As we have seen throughout our history, each generation is faced with picking up where the last generation left off and continuing the fight for progress. Today, there is still so much work to do in honoring the legacy of those Foot Soldiers by fighting to ensure justice, opportunity, and equality for all.

I am inspired by the activists we have seen in recent years who are answering the call to do that work -- we are witnessing Americans from every corner of our country pushing for an end to police brutality, voter suppression, family separation, pollution, and corporate greed.

They are not only holding the line of progress, but they are paving the path that will allow the next generation to further our fight.

In Congress, I am proud to stand alongside them to ensure that families today have an opportunity to achieve higher heights. Especially in the face of a pandemic, we cannot let up in our efforts to expand access to health care, create a more equitable public education system, enact a more sustainable way of life, and give every hard worker an opportunity to earn a living wage.

The outcome of this election will have an enormous impact on our progress for generations to come.

We are fighting for the soul of our nation and there is still much work to be done -- So I'm asking you to join me. Will you chip in to my campaign today? →

Onward,

Congresswoman Terri Sewell