Bloody Sunday, 45 years ago today

On this day in 1965, hundreds of civil rights marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams were attacked by police as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama on the way to the state capitol in Montgomery to call for voting rights for African Americans. The nation's shocked reaction to the brutal televised images helped President Lyndon Johnson push for passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Here's to the brave people who faced tear gas, police dogs, truncheons and all the tools of state repression in breaking the grip of white supremacy.

Hatred and intolerance still remain, and people's fear and prejudice can still be exploited by demagogues and fanatics; but the brave and disciplined people who marched two-by-two in Selma 45 years ago were helping to build and preserve America. It was they, not the enforcers of an unjust status quo, who were the true patriots. So it is for new struggles today. Lewis, who led the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and whose skull was fractured by police that day, survived to become a U.S. congressman from Atlanta. He is an outspoken supporter of civil marriage equality.

(Photo of John Lewis on the ground, about to be struck by an Alabama state trooper on March 7, 1965, is from the Encyclopedia of Alabama.)

Comments

[Joel Lawson]

Amen and Amen:

"I have fought too hard and too long against discrimination based on race and color not to stand up against discrimination based on sexual orientation. I've heard the reasons for opposing civil marriage for same-sex couples. Cut through the distractions, and they stink of the same fear, hatred, and intolerance I have known in racism and in bigotry." - John Lewis

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/10/25/at_a_crossroads_on_gay_unions/

[Barrett Brick]

40 years ago today I and some of my high school classmates were in a clearing off a state road in Virginia Beach, watching what would be my first total solar eclipse. Every now and then a car would pull off and ask us what we were doing, and would stay awhile to watch with us. Most were white folk. But when a black family pulled over to do the same, within minutes a state trooper pulled up as well, to make sure that "all was OK." That left as indelible an impression on me as did the eclipse.