Never forget ‘Bloody Sunday’

U.S. Attorney Rachael Rollins will co-lead a delegation of more than 30 other U.S. attorneys in Alabama to commemorate “Bloody Sunday,” the day a civil rights demonstration there fell into violence in 1965, as well as the passage of the Voting Rights Act that same year.

“Walking the same steps as those who courageously marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in 1965 is a powerful and moving experience. I am incredibly honored to join my Justice Department colleagues in Selma,” Rollins, who serves as the vice-chair of the Attorney General Advisory Committee’s Civil Rights Subcommittee, said in a statement.

“The beliefs that compelled those before us to march toward justice — that everyone should have equitable access to participatory democracy, fair and equal protection of the law, and the ability to live and thrive authentically and fully as themselves — are identical to what drives the work of my office and the Justice Department today,” she added.

The delegation will stay in the area beginning Saturday and lasting through Tuesday, and will meet with both community and civil rights leaders and exploring the history of civil rights in a place where one of the movement’s darkest days occurred.

On March 7, 1965, a demonstration with 600 people in Selma, Ala., ended in blood and injury when local and state police attacked them.

The leaders of that demonstration included John Lewis, then the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee who later became a Congressman from Georgia until his death in 2020, and Hosea Williams of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.