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55 Years After 'Bloody Sunday,' Fight to Vote Marches On in Selma

Kane Farabaugh

   SELMA, ALABAMA - Under a partly cloudy sky, amid the beat of drums and
   protest songs that filled the air, Brenda McCrae moved among the
   surging, massive crowd across the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge during
   this year's Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee to complete the bookend of a
   journey that started, for her, in 1963 on the National Mall in
   Washington.

   "I was in D.C. when (Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.) made the 'I Have a
   Dream' speech. This was on my bucket list, and I've done it," she told
   VOA as thefinished the March 1 bridge crossing event. "It's really
   important."

   On March 7, 1965, hundreds of voting rights demonstrators at the same
   location in Selma fell victim to tear gas and brutal beatings as
   Alabama law enforcement officers descended on the peaceful civil rights
   march.

   The "Bloody Sunday" incident spurred larger marches from Selma to
   Montgomery later that month led by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which
   culminated in the 1965 Voting Rights Act signed by U.S. President
   Lyndon Johnson.

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