50th Anniversary of the first march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama

Of the several "50th Anniversary's" occurring this year, the remembrance of the bravery and commitment of the roughly 600 Alabama citizens and supporters who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, despite high levels of violence, in peaceful pursuit of basic human dignity is extremely important and deservedly commemorated. The marches from Selma to Montgomery were one giant step in a long march towards freedom for people suffering around the world. 

Indeed my own brief confusion about today's news coverage stems from the fact that the phrase "Bloody Sunday" is more often attributed to a very different display of violence in Northern Ireland. Different, yes, and yet also a circumstance of citizens desperately seeking freedom from fear and access to equal rights and human dignity. Citizens who were inspired by the people of Alabama and across America.

This link will take you to the pre-prepared transcript of President Obama's speech in Selma earlier today, which I believe he delivered quite well. CNN: President Obama's remarks at #Selma50

We should never forget the struggle of those who have fought for the freedoms we have come to enjoy, or even demand, and we should never forget that this struggle is ongoing.

Some excerpts:

"We do a disservice to the cause of justice by intimating that bias and discrimination are immutable, that racial division is inherent to America. If you think nothing's changed in the past 50 years, ask somebody who lived through the Selma or Chicago or Los Angeles of the 1950s. Ask the female CEO who once might have been assigned to the secretarial pool if nothing's changed. Ask your gay friend if it's easier to be out and proud in America now than it was thirty years ago. To deny this progress, this hard-won progress --- our progress --- would be to rob us of our own agency, our own capacity, our responsibility to do what we can to make America better."
...
"We know the march is not yet over. We know the race is not yet won. We know that reaching that blessed destination where we are judged, all of us, by the content of our character requires admitting as much, facing up to the truth. "We are capable of bearing a great burden," James Baldwin once wrote, "once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.""

#Selma50