House approves gold medal for voting rights marchers

Mary Troyan | USA Today

WASHINGTON – Foot soldiers in the voting rights marches of 1965 would receive the highest civilian honor awarded by Congress under legislation adopted unanimously by the House on Wednesday.

The bill would award the Congressional Gold Medal to thousands who marched on Bloody Sunday, Turnaround Tuesday and the final, successful 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery in Alabama.

The Senate is expected to quickly approve the measure, followed by a ceremony at the Capitol in the coming weeks.

"The extraordinary bravery and sacrifice these foot soldiers displayed in pursuit of a peaceful march from Selma to Montgomery brought national attention to the struggle for equal voting rights, and served as the catalyst for Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which President (Lyndon B.) Johnson signed into law on August 6, 1965," the resolution says.

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., a native of Selma, was the lead sponsor of the Congressional Gold Medal resolution. In a speech on the House floor, Sewell said the marchers were motivated because "they could no longer bear the burdens of second-class citizenship."

She said the medal is "for their valor and determination in the relentless pursuit of the promise of our great Constitution, that all men and all women were indeed created equal."

March 7 is the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when people peacefully protesting the lack of voting rights for African-Americans were beaten by white state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.

A larger group of about 2,500 tried again two days later — Turnaround Tuesday — but chose not to proceed without protection. After President Johnson announced his plans for a voting rights bill and U.S. District Judge Frank M. Johnson ordered the marchers to receive federal protection, about 8,000 marchers left Selma March 21. They arrived in Montgomery four days later with a crowd of about 25,000.

Rep. Martha Roby of Alabama was a leading Republican sponsor of the medal legislation.

The medal honors "the brave men and women who not only changed Alabama and America, but... changed the world," Roby said.

The resolution cites three march leaders by name. John Lewis was the head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and was among those injured on Bloody Sunday. Lewis, a native of Alabama, is now a congressman from Georgia. The other two mentioned in the resolution are the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., who died in 1968, and Rev. Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, who died in 2000.

The medal itself would be kept at the Selma Interpretive Center, which opened in 2011 on Broad Street and is part of the Selma-to-Montgomery National Historic Trail.

Congress awards the medal, its "highest expression of national appreciation for distinguished achievements and contributions," a handful of times each year.

The medal, first awarded in 1776 to George Washington, has been used to honor individuals and events such as the World War II members of the Civil Air Patrol, Winston Churchill, Rosa Parks, the Tuskegee Airmen and the people who died in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.