SELMA, Alabama—Thousands of people from around the country came here March 5-6 to mark the 40th anniversary of Bloody Sunday by reenacting a 1965 march that was a turning point in the fight for civil rights.

Participants this year included youth and students; veterans of the civil rights movement; working people from cities throughout the state; farmers; and some immigrant workers from Mexico.

The 1965 demonstration was blocked by police using clubs and tear gas from proceeding across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, on the edge of Selma. Marchers had planned to bring their demands for voting rights for Blacks to Montgomery, the state capital. After a week of national protests and a federal court order, then-Governor George Wallace was forced to allow the march to proceed. Thousands of civil rights supporters poured into Alabama from around the country to join the 50-mile march, which was completed on March 25, 1965. The 1965 Voting Rights Act, a major victory for the entire working class, was passed in August five months after the march to Montgomery.

The Voting Rights Act is up for extension in May 2007. At the march, Jesse Jackson announced plans to gather a million signatures in support of extension of the act that will culminate in an August 6 demonstration for voting rights in Atlanta.

—SUSAN LAMONT  
 
 
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