Bloody Sunday: Decades after violence in Selma, Alabama spurred the Voting Rights Act, organizers worry about its fate

Salma, Alaa.. Sixty-one years after state troopers attacked civil rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, thousands are gathering in the Alabama city this weekend, amid new concerns about the future of the Voting Rights Act.

The violence of March 7, 1965 that became known as “Bloody Sunday” shocked the nation and helped spur the passage of landmark legislation that dismantled barriers to voting for black Americans in the Jim Crow South.

But this year’s anniversary celebrations — events continue throughout the weekend and end 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 some congressional districts and local districts are drawn so minority voters have a chance to elect their preferred candidate.

“I fear that all the progress we have made over the past 61 years will be wiped out,” said Charles Mauldin, 78, one of the protesters beaten that day.

The justices are expected to issue a ruling soon in a case in Louisiana related to the role of race in drawing congressional districts. A ruling that prohibits or limits that role could have serious consequences, potentially opening the door for Republican-controlled states to redistrict and shrink majority black and Latino districts that tend to favor Democrats.

Democratic officeholders, civil rights leaders and others descended on the southern city to honor the pivotal moment of the civil rights movement and to issue calls to action. Organizers said that like the protesters on Bloody Sunday, they must keep moving forward.

Former state Sen. Hank Sanders, who helped start the annual celebration, said the 1965 events in Selma marked a turning point for the country and helped move the United States closer to becoming a true democracy.

“The feeling is a deep fear of being sent back, a fear greater than at any time since 1965,” Sanders said.

U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures won election in 2024 for an Alabama district redrawn by a federal court. He said that what happened in Selma and the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act “had an enormous impact in shaping the shape of America and how America is represented in Congress.”

“I think coming to Selma is a refreshing reminder every year that the progress we have made from the civil rights movement is not permanent. We have been under constant attack almost since we gained these rights,” Figgers said.

In 1965, Bloody Sunday marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams marched in pairs across the Selma Bridge, heading toward Montgomery. Mauldin, then 17, was part of the third pairing behind Williams and Lewis.

At the top of the bridge, they could see a sea of ​​law enforcement officers, including some on horses, waiting for them. But they persisted. “Fear was not an option,” Mauldin recalled in a phone interview. “It wasn’t that we didn’t have fear, it was that we chose courage over fear.”

“We were all beaten up. We were run over. We were tear gassed. We were brutalized by the state of Alabama,” Mauldin said.