'Bloody Sunday' 60th anniversary marked in Selma with remembrances and concerns about the future
Source: AP
U.S. Rep. Hakeem Jeffries D-NY, U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters D-CA, Rev. Al Sharpton, Rev. Jesse Jackson and NAACP and NAACP President Derrick Johnson, from left, march across the Edmund Pettus bridge during the 60th anniversary of the march to ensure that African Americans could exercise their constitutional right to vote, Sunday March 9, 2025 in Selma, Ala. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)
Updated 4:21 PM EDT, March 9, 2025
SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Charles Mauldin was near the front of a line of voting rights marchers walking in pairs across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on March 7, 1965. The marchers were protesting white officials’ refusal to allow Black Alabamians to register to vote, as well as the killing days earlier of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a minister and voting rights organizer who was shot by a state trooper in nearby Marion.
Selma on Sunday marked the 60th anniversary of the clash that became known as Bloody Sunday. The attack shocked the nation and galvanized support for the U.S. Voting Rights Act of 1965. The annual commemoration pays homage to those who fought to secure voting rights for Black Americans and brought calls to recommit to the fight for equality. For those gathered in Selma, the celebration comes amid concerns about new voting restrictions and the Trump administration’s effort to remake federal agencies they said helped make America a democracy for all
At the apex of the span over the Alabama River, they saw what awaited them: a line of state troopers, deputies and men on horseback. They kept going. After they approached, law enforcement gave a two-minute warning to disperse and then unleashed violence. “Within about a minute or a half, they took their billy clubs, holding it on both ends, began to push us back to back us in, and then they began to beat men, women and children, and tear gas men, women and children, and cattle prod men, women and children viciously,” said Mauldin, who was 17 at the time.
Speaking at the pulpit of the city’s historic Tabernacle Baptist Church, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries said what happened in Selma changed the nation. He said the 60th anniversary comes at a time when there is “trouble all around” and some “want to whitewash our history.” But he said like the marchers of Bloody Sunday, they must keep going. “At this moment, faced with trouble on every side, we’ve got to press on,” Jeffries said to the crowd that included the Rev. Jesse Jackson, multiple members of Congress and others gathered for the commemoration.
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