Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee to honor civil rights icons
March 3, 2021 7:29AM AKST
FILE – In this March 7, 1965, file photo, a state trooper swings a billy club at John Lewis, right foreground, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala. The March 7, 2021, Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee will be the first without the towering presence of Lewis, as well as the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the Rev. C.T. Vivian and attorney Bruce Boynton, who all died in 2020. (AP Photo/File)
By KAT STAFFORD Associated Press
DETROIT (AP) — Sunday marks the 56th anniversary of the Selma bridge crossing and “Bloody Sunday,” when more than 500 demonstrators gathered to demand the right to vote and cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. They were met by dozens of state troopers on that March 7, 1965, day, and many marchers were severely beaten. But this year’s commemoration will be different. It will largely be virtual because of the COVID-19 pandemic. And it’s the first without the towering presence of civil rights icons Congressman John Lewis, the Rev. Joseph Lowery, the Rev. C.T. Vivian and attorney Bruce Boynton, who all died in 2020. It also comes at a time of racial reckoning in the U.S.
