Bloody Sunday: Today marks 60 years since attack on Civil Rights marchers in Selma

ATLANTA — Friday marks 60 years since “Bloody Sunday,” a major turning point in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

On March 7, 1965, hundreds of civil rights advocates, including late Congressman John Lewis, gathered for a peaceful march for voting rights in Selma.

But that peace was shattered on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by Alabama State Troopers.

“They came toward us. Beating us with nightsticks, trampled by horses, releasing the tear gas. I thought I was gonna die on that bridge. I thought I saw death,” Lewis told Channel 2 Action News in 2015.

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Lewis was hospitalized with a cracked skull. But the attack on the marchers bolstered support for the Voting Rights Act. Five months later, Johnson signed the act.

“We said it was worth it. The blood, the beatings, the jailing, it was all worth it,” Lewis said in 2015.

Over the years, survivors and civil right leaders have gathered in Selma to walk across the bridge again as a reminder for what they went through. Lewis made a final trip across the bridge in March 2020, a few months before he died from pancreatic cancer.

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For the 60th anniversary this weekend, Georgia Sen. Raphael Warnock says he will make the trip to Selma.

“Selma reminds us better than most places that unarmed truth and unconditional love as Dr. King used to say will have the last word,” Warnock told Channel 2 Action News.

Warnock said he believes there is still work to do.

“We need every voice. That is fundamental truth of democracy in the first place. Every voice matters. We have to raise our voices not only at the polls, but after. We need to raise our voices now more than ever,” he said.

There will events throughout the weekend in Selma and Montgomery.

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