Thousands gather in Selma to mark 60th anniversary of Bloody Sunday

Ernie Suggs, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Mar 9, 2025

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SELMA, Ala. — Moments before leading them across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday, U.S. Sen. Raphael Warnock urged the congregation at Tabernacle Baptist Church to create a “reimagining” of how American works.

The Georgia Democrat said the time is now for action as thousands marched amid thunderstorms and cold temperatures to mark the 60th anniversary of the Bloody Sunday civil rights march.

“We need a reimagining of what it means to be an American family,” said Warnock, also the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. “We don’t need MAGA. We need to make America greater than it has been.

“They are stirring up old racist resentment,” he said, referring to President Donald Trump and adviser Elon Musk. “Convincing folks that other folks are your enemy. But while they got you looking over there, they are picking your pocket.”

Violent storms and heavy rain left lingering cold on Selma on the Bloody Sunday anniversary. The event marked the tragic and vicious March 7, 1965, prelude to the 50-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, the Alabama state capital.

Led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams, marchers were beaten and gassed as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The events of that day stunned the nation, and President Lyndon Baines Johnson immediately introduced and passed the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., called the signing “the most important civil rights bill in the history of this country.”

“Civil rights history is not Democratic or Republican or partisan history,” Jeffries said Sunday. “It is American history. And we will never let them erase that.”

Rashida Trimble Winfrey, who grew up in Selma and southwest Atlanta, called Sunday a “full-circle moment.”

“I grew up hearing stories of struggle and overcoming discrimination. Now, all the way to the present,” Winfrey said. “I work in corporate America in a job that is technically DEI. So, to see DEI totally under attack, I felt it was so important at this time for people to come in droves and commemorate the lives and history and all that it meant to walk across that bridge.”

On Sunday, thousands of people crossed the bridge again.

They went with a warning from the Rev. Al Sharpton, who spoke along with Warnock.

“Don’t go like tourists,” he said. “We must go with commitment, not of commemoration. But of continuation. Today, they are threatening the same rights that they marched for 60 years ago. Unless we go across committed to keep this going, we are mocking the bridge.”

U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., said the 60th anniversary of the march comes “at a time when the vote is in peril.”

From the pulpit, she noted the number of voting restrictions introduced since the U.S. Supreme Court effectively abolished a key part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required jurisdictions with a history of racial discrimination to clear new voting laws with the Justice Department

This week, members of Congress reintroduced legislation named for John Lewis to restore the requirement.

Members of sororities, fraternities and masonic lodges, dressed in the colors, walked together and sang. High school and Black college students from all over the South marched. Politicians, activists and civil rights workers marched with farmers and laborers.

State troopers, who Lewis famously called a “sea of blue” in 1965, greeted marchers on the other side of the bridge with smiles. Many of them were Black.

“You can feel the soul that was in this community. You can feel the ancestry as you walked over the bridge,” said Ramiya Caldwell, a political science major at Fort Valley State University, who came with a busload of classmates. “You can also feel the pain and strength as well. They were fighting for rights that we are still fighting for today.”

Rhonda Briggins, who grew up in Alabama but now lives in Atlanta, road on a bus to Selma with her sorority sisters from Delta Sigma Theta. She has crossed the bridge for the anniversary more than 30 times.

“Ordinary people fought and died on this bridge to protect our rights and democracy,” Briggins said. “We find ourselves now in the same situation. Today is a rededication to our commitment to justice, our people and our communities. And the commitment to the fight so we can move our country where it needs to be. Fighting for justice and equality for all.”

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