Barack Obama has called for a renewal of the civil rights movement on the eve of the 50th anniversary of the march on Selma, urging law enforcement and voting rights reforms but also linking the ongoing struggle to immigration reform and gay rights.



In a radio interview recorded before he travelled to Saturday’s memorial events in Alabama, the president made reference to this week’s damning report on racism in the Ferguson police department, arguing that law enforcement was a “big chunk” of the civil liberties challenge.



“I don’t think that is typical of what happens across the country, but it’s not an isolated incident,” he told Joe Madison, host of the SiriusXM show Urban View.



“There are circumstances where trust between communities and law enforcement has broken down ... Individuals or entire departments may not have the training or the accountability to make sure that they are protecting and serving all people and not just some of them.”

Obama also warned that progress made after Selma risked being undermined by Congress and apathy among younger African Americans.

“When it comes to voting, we still see big chunks of the community disenfranchised,” he said. “Part of that is the responsibility of Congress to pass and renew the Voting Rights Act: the seminal capstone of the civil rights movement and the march on Selma.

“But we also disenfranchise ourselves by not voting,” Obama said. “I think there the ‘Joshua generation’ has fallen short. The notion that you don’t have a third or a half of African Americans voting at this stage – that is not living up to the legacy.”

He challenged this post-civil rights era generation to “grab the torch and move it forward” but also to recognise that modern controversies over immigration reform and same-sex marriage were part of the same struggle.

“When you think about the principle that was upheld that day, and in subsequent days, at the Edmund Pettus bridge, it was the promise of an inclusive America,” said Obama.

“When it comes to immigration, we are a nation of immigrants, and the notion that some young kid who was brought here when they were two or three years old might somehow be deported at the age of 20 or 25 even though they have grown up as an American – that’s not who we are. That’s not true to the spirit of what the march on Selma was about.”

The president is expected to focus heavily on the theme of not just continuing but widening the scope of the civil rights movement in a series of weekend events pegged to the anniversary.

“One of the great reasons that we celebrate that heyday of the civil rights movement ... is that it didn’t just open up the doors for black folks,” Obama said on Friday. “It wasn’t just about black folks; it was about America and who were are and the legacy that then opened the doors for Americans with disabilities and Latinos and Asian Americans and women.

“We have to understand what that spirit was about. It wasn’t just about one race, it was about who all of us are,” he concluded.