President marks ‘Bloody Sunday’ in Selma, Ala.

President Biden on Sunday paid tribute to the heroes of Bloody Sunday in Selma, Ala., a turning point for voting rights nearly six decades ago, saying that the fundamental right to vote is “under assault” today in America.

Biden spoke at Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, where 58 years ago civil rights demonstrators were beaten by police.

The brutality sparked national outrage and led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

“The right to vote ... to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty,” Biden said. “This fundamental right remains under assault.”

He said the conservative Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act and that since the 2020 election, a wave of states has passed “dozens and dozens” of laws limiting voter access, fueled by election deniers.

Biden made a campaign pledge to strengthen voting rights and unveiled the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act in 2021. The bill had provisions to restrict partisan redrawing of congressional districts, strike down hurdles to voting and make the campaign finance system more open and transparent.

It passed in what was the Democratic-controlled House but not in the Senate. With the House now under Republican control, the fate of the bill is grim.

A crowd of several thousand people gathered to hear the president’s remarks.

Delores Gresham, a retired health care worker, said she arrived four hours early to get front-row seats for her grandchildren.

“I want them to know what happened here,” she said.

Joining Biden were Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King III, Al Sharpton and other veterans of the civil rights movement. In what has become a tradition, they sang “We Shall Overcome” and stopped on the bridge to pray.

“On this bridge, blood was given to help redeem the soul of America,” Biden said.

On March 7, 1965, about 600 peaceful demonstrators gathered in Selma, planning to walk 54 miles to the state capital in Montgomery as part of an effort to register Black voters.

Led by John Lewis, who later served in the U.S. House of Representatives, the demonstrators were savagely beaten by Alabama troopers and sheriff’s deputies as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

President Lyndon Johnson introduced the Voting Rights Act of 1965 eight days after Bloody Sunday. He signed it five months later.