Obama Planning ‘Bloody Sunday’ Visit to Selma

AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

To mark the fiftieth anniversary of the march on Selma, the White House has announced that President Obama will visit the Alabama city on March 7, the day that went down in history as “Bloody Sunday.”

The White House said on Tuesday that Obama will make the trip to Selma to “highlight the president and his administration’s overall efforts to mark the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.”

The march on Selma came two years after Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. famously delivered his “I Have A Dream” speech, an address that helped set the agenda for the civil rights movement.

On March 7, 1965, civil rights activists, black and white alike, attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge into downtown Selma, Alabama. City authorities surged forward to prevent the marchers from crossing the bridge, beating them with nightsticks to prevent their advances. The uncensored scene was broadcast nationwide, live on television, shocking the nation.

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA). Lewis, present on that day in 1965, will join Obama in his commemoration.

Follow Warner Todd Huston on Twitter: @warnerthuston. Email the author at igcolonel@hotmail.com. 

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