President Joe Biden used the searing platform of the “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, to recommit to a pillar of democracy. He stressed that the right of Americans to vote remains under assault. His visit commemorates the 58th anniversary of the day when 600 people led by 25-year-old activist John Lewis began a march from Selma to Montgomery demanding an end to discrimination in voter registration.
Joe Biden walked along with local leaders across the Pettus Bridge along US Highway 80 where in 1965 white troopers including local and state lawmen brutally attacked the marchers with billy clubs and tear gas.
President Joe Biden Was Speaking Near The Historical Edmund Pettus Bridge
Later that year, the Voting Rights Act was passed, a landmark federal achievement of the 1960s Civil Rights Movement. The President used the intense memories of the movement nearly 6 decades back to stress his recommitment to a landmark of democracy.
Speaking before a crowd of several thousand people seated at the side of the historic bridge, Joe Biden said that the town was a reckoning. He said that voting rights were the starting point of liberty and democracy. And with it anything was possible.
Joe Biden warned that this basic right to vote remained under threat. He said that the Republican-controlled Supreme Court destroyed the act in the last few years. Even since the last presidential election, dozens of anti-vote laws that were propped by the “Big Lie” had destroyed the Voting Rights Act.
The President vowed to pursue landmark legislation to reinforce the safeguarding of voters’ rights in the country. His landmark legislation in 2021 includes provisions that restrict partisan redrawing of congressional districts, prohibit barriers to voting for all, make more transparent the system of financing voting, and prevent wealthy donors from bankrolling causes from the sidelines.
