President Joe Biden joined marchers over the weekend in Selma, Alabama, in commemorating "Bloody Sunday," the day when Civil Rights protesters heading to the U.S. Capitol were brutally attacked by police.
On March 7, 1965, demonstrators were walking to the Capitol and trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to demand voting rights and were stopped by a wall of state troopers and officers armed with billy clubs. Violence broke out, and many of the demonstrators were brutally beaten and attacked with tear gas.
The group was led by Civil Rights leader John Lewis and activist Hosea Williams.
Just eight days later, on March 15, 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
"They forced the country to confront the hard truth and to act to keep the promise of America alive," Biden said, according to a transcript of his remarks shared by the White House.
"You can never know where you're going unless you know where you've been," Biden continued. "We know where we've been. And we know, more importantly, where we have to go. Forward, together."
This weekend marked 58 years since the march.
"Selma is a reckoning," Biden said in his remarks over the weekend. "The right to vote ... to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it anything's possible."
He added that voting rights, a "fundamental right," are still under attack today, but he promised his administration would not "be silent" on the issue.
"We know there's work to do," he said.
According to CBN News, in 2022, Vice President Kamala Harris attended the anniversary march in Selma, Alabama.
"Today, we stand on this bridge at a different time," she said in 2022. "We again, however, find ourselves caught in between injustice and justice, between disappointment and determination, still in a fight to form a more perfect union," Harris said. "And nowhere is that more clear than when it comes to the ongoing fight to secure the freedom to vote."
Photo courtesy: ©Getty Images/Drew Angerer/Staff
Amanda Casanova is a writer living in Dallas, Texas. She has covered news for ChristianHeadlines.com since 2014. She has also contributed to The Houston Chronicle, U.S. News and World Report and IBelieve.com. She blogs at The Migraine Runner.
