Civil rights pilgrimage honors King 50 years after his death

WASHINGTON – Rep. John Lewis has led a civil rights pilgrimage back to Alabama to commemorate the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery for decades, but this year the trip will include an emotional first stop in Memphis where Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated 50 years ago.

“I think it’s so fitting and so right that this group is able to go there and to go back to that site … where (King) said, ‘I have seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you, but as a people we will get there,’ ” Lewis said of the stop in Memphis where King delivered his famous speech the day before he was shot, April 4, 1968.

“I think we will,” Lewis, D-Ga., said. “And I truly believe that young people, the children, are going to help get us there.”

Nearly 30 members of Congress are expected to join Lewis on the bipartisan trip beginning Friday, which includes stops in Birmingham, Montgomery and Selma.

The annual pilgrimage to Selma commemorates “Bloody Sunday,” when peaceful protesters, including Lewis, were beaten by police as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge during a 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery.

Organizers added the stop in Memphis in hopes that members of Congress will learn lessons from King’s approach and his work in the South.

“We thought in these times ... it would be valuable to have political leaders hear his inspirational sermon and speeches, step in his footprints, share his impact with some of the people who knew him best and walk among the places that helped shape him,” said Joan Mooney, president of The Faith and Politics Institute.