This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Obama in Selma: Ferguson report shows civil rights 'march is not yet finished' Read more

Thousands of demonstrators gathered outside the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama on Sunday to reprise one of the most powerful acts of the civil rights era.

But memorializing history was not the only order of the day, attorney general Eric Holder said in a speech inside the church. In a message that appeared to be coordinated with a pre-recorded television interview by President Barack Obama, Holder attacked a 2013 supreme court decision that invalidated part of the Voting Rights Act as he called for a new national push for protections for minority voters.

This year’s march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Holder said, was a symbolic call to finish the work of the original demonstration of 7 March 1965, “Bloody Sunday”, which set the stage for the passage of the Voting Rights Act. Police estimated the crowd crossing the bridge on Sunday at 15-20,000.

“Let me be clear,” Holder said. “While the court’s [2013] decision removed one of the Justice Department’s most effective tools, we remain undaunted and undeterred in our pursuit of a meaningful right to vote for every eligible American.”

In his interview, Obama – who spoke in Selma on Saturday – told CBS he was troubled by photo ID requirements to vote and said the government needed a revitalized Voting Rights Act to prevent ballot box discrimination, the Associated Press reported.

Supreme court's voting rights decision 'deeply disappointing', Obama says Read more

Voting rights were under assault even before the high court decision, with a large minority of state legislatures, mainly in Republican-controlled states, passing new voter identification laws after 2010. Twenty-two states added voter-restriction laws between 2010 and 2014, a study by the Brennan Center for Justice found. Many of the laws were built on template legislation circulated by the conservative activist group American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC.

A march 50 years ago over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the only way out of downtown Selma across the Alabama River, ended in bloodshed when police and civilian recruits attacked the marchers in brutal scenes that gave the day the name Bloody Sunday.

A preliminary 50th anniversary reenactment of the 1965 march was led on Saturday by Obama, the nation’s first black president, who crossed the bridge hand-in-hand with veteran activists who were beaten and hospitalized that day, including Georgia congressman John Lewis and 103-year-old Amelia Boynton Robinson. Also joining the march were former president George W Bush and his wife, Laura.

There were fewer former presidents in attendance on Sunday, but no shortage of dignitaries and no less a sense of history. Speaking inside the church before the reenactment, Martin Luther King III, the eldest son of the famous civil rights leader, called on Congress to pass legislation that would ensure access to the polls for everyone.

“Since 100 members of Congress were with the president yesterday, there ought to be legislation that is proposed tomorrow,” King said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crowds gather near the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday. Photograph: Bill Frakes/AP

Attending Sunday’s ceremony alongside Holder were Loretta Lynch, the nominee to replace him, who would be the first African American woman to serve as attorney general; Jeh Johnson, the homeland security secretary; labor secretary Tom Perez; and others.

Shaun Donovan, the director of the Office of Management and Budget, which crafts the White House’s annual spending plans, won applause at Brown Chapel with an announcement of a $50m budget line item to restore and highlight key civil rights monuments across the country.



Outside the church, crowds sang gospel songs and cheered the speeches inside, before proceeding south to the bridge. Among the crowd were friends and family of Michael Brown, the teenager whose killing by a police officer last August in Ferguson, Missouri, gave rise to national protests.

The march was to be followed by a salute to civil rights foot soldiers and a “Salute to Selma” concert at the foot of the bridge.

Representative John Lewis 'live' tweets Bloody Sunday – as he saw and felt it Read more

On Saturday, Lewis “live” tweeted his experience on Bloody Sunday, recounting in real time how he and his fellow marchers were brutalized by Alabama state troopers.

“50 yrs ago today, we set out to march from Selma to Montgomery to dramatize to the nation that people of color were denied the right to vote,” he wrote, before posting a series of photos and recollections from the day.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crowds take a symbolic walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Photograph: Bill Frakes/AP

In his speech at the pulpit of Brown Chapel, Holder was unsparing in his assessment of damage from the supreme court decision of two years ago.

“In 2013, a narrowly divided and profoundly flawed supreme court ruling undermined Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act and dealt a serious blow to a cornerstone of American civil rights law,” he said.

“But as Justice Ginsburg wrote in her striking dissent, ‘Throwing out pre-clearance when it has worked and is continuing to work … is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.’”

