Decades after violence in Selma spurred the Voting Rights Act, organizers worry about its fate
SELMA, Ala. — Sixty-one years after state troopers attacked civil rights protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, thousands are gathering this weekend in the Alabama city, amid new concerns about the future of the Voting Rights Act.
The violence of March 7, 1965, known as Bloody Sunday, shocked the nation and helped lead to the passage of historic legislation that dismantled barriers to voting for black Americans in the Jim Crow South.
But this year’s anniversary celebrations — events run through the weekend and culminate with a memorial march across the bridge on Sunday — come as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case that could limit a provision of the Voting Rights Act that helped ensure that certain congressional and local districts were drawn so that minority voters had a chance to elect the candidate of their choice.
“I fear that all the progress we have made over the last 61 years will be wiped out,” said Charles Mauldin, 78, one of the protesters beaten that day.
The justices are expected to rule soon on a Louisiana case regarding the role of race in drawing congressional districts. A ruling banning or limiting that role could have far-reaching consequences, potentially opening the door for Republican-controlled states to redistrict and roll back majority-Black and Latino districts that tend to favor Democrats.
Democratic officials, civil rights leaders and others descended on the southern city to pay tribute to the pivotal moment of the civil rights movement and issue calls for action. Like the Bloody Sunday protesters, they must keep moving, organizers said.
Former Sen. Hank Sanders, who helped launch the annual commemoration, said the events in Selma in 1965 were a turning point for the country and helped bring the United States closer to its true democracy.
“We feel a deep fear that we will be recaptured – a fear greater than at any time since 1965,” Sanders said.
U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures won the 2024 election in an Alabama district that was redrawn in federal court. He said what happened in Selma and the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act “was monumental in shaping the way America looks and the way America is represented in Congress.”
“I think coming to Selma is a refreshing reminder every year that the progress we’ve made through the civil rights movement is not perpetual. It’s been under constant attack almost since we got these rights,” Figures said.
In 1965, Bloody Sunday marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams crossed the Selma Bridge in pairs toward Montgomery. Mauldin, then 17, was part of the third duo behind Williams and Lewis.
At the top of the bridge, they could see a sea of law enforcement officers, some on horseback, waiting for them. But they continued. “Being afraid was not an option. And it’s not that we weren’t afraid, it’s that we chose courage over fear,” Mauldin recalled in a telephone interview.
“We were all hit. We were trampled. We were tear gassed. And we were brutalized by the state of Alabama,” Mauldin said.
