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The march culminated a week of events honoring the past but acknowledging the very real, current threats to voter rights. Friend, For the thousands descending on Selma, Alabama, last weekend for the annual commemoration of the Bloody Sunday march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the events were much like those they had experienced in years previous. Marchers again traced the path from Brown Chapel AME Church through the city’s core and across the bridge as part of the Bridge Crossing Jubilee this past weekend. Southern Poverty Law Center President and CEO Margaret Huang, who led the SPLC’s delegation at the bridge crossing on March 5, said the civil rights battles that started in the 1950s and ’60s are not only unfinished, they are increasing in tempo. “The SPLC is here because we are deeply committed to making sure voting rights are protected across the South and particularly for communities of color,” Huang said that morning. “This march is a way of reminding everyone of the importance of this work and that we all, as John Lewis called upon us to do, have to stand up and make ‘good trouble.’” This year was starkly different from previous celebrations. Several buildings were missing. Others were boarded up, not from the economic decline that has plagued Selma in recent years but because of the tornado that tore through the city’s heart two months ago. The march culminated a week of events honoring the past but acknowledging the very real, current threats to voter rights. Nonviolence training sessions began last week, but alongside the presentations on voter registration and voter mobilization were groups focused on helping families rebuild their homes and repair the physical damage from January’s storm. This year’s events marked the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when marchers were brutally beaten by white state troopers and sheriff’s deputies, some on horseback, as they tried to cross the bridge on a march to the state Capitol in Montgomery to demand voting rights for Black people. “Today is 58 years after Bloody Sunday and the march from Selma to Montgomery that led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and also two years after the Jan. 6 insurrection,” Huang said. “It has never been more clear that extremism and hate are driving direct threats to our democracy and our civil rights.” The violence on March 7, 1965, rather than silencing the movement, poured gasoline on the sparks of change. Thousands of activists poured into Selma to join the campaign, culminating in a 54-mile march to the steps of the Alabama Capitol 18 days later and the enactment of the Voting Rights Act the following August. Sincerely, Your Friends at the Southern Poverty Law Center
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