Crowds gather before a symbolic walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Sunday, March 8, 2015, in Selma, Ala. The weekend marks the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday,' a civil rights march in which protestors were beaten, trampled and tear-gassed.(Photo: Mike Stewart, AP)
SELMA, Ala. — Fifty years after Alabama troopers savagely attacked demonstrators protesting discriminatory practices that kept black voters from the polls, thousands of people gathered here Sunday to mark the anniversary of the attack that shocked Americans and helped usher in the landmark Voting Rights of 1965.
By 2 p.m., though, reporters were hearing that the symbolic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge was being canceled for safety reasons. Too many people already on the bridge, troopers told WXIA TV.
Few people had heard that, though, and they continued to cross the bridge.
The faithful had gathered at the city's churches ahead of what has become an annual tradition here: a mass march across the bridge where 600 peaceful marchers were attacked by law enforcement armed with billy clubs and tear gas on what became known as Bloody Sunday.
At the Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, which was the starting point for the Selma-to-Montgomery marches of 1965, an overflow crowd for a pre-march service spilled into the street. They heard Attorney General Eric Holder pay tribute to the men and women who fought for the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
"They marched through the abandonment of Reconstruction; marched through the injustice of Plessy v. Ferguson ; marched through the era of slavery by another name, and the dark days of Jim Crow; marched past – but always saw – peculiar institutions and that strange, horrific fruit," Holder said, referring to the bodies of black people lynched in trees. "They were met with suspicion, with hostility, and with hatred. And still, they marched on."
Holder's tribute came one day after President Obama visited Selma to celebrate the voting rights campaign of 50 years ago.
To bring viewers closer to the events in Selma, USA TODAY is filming in full 360-degree video.In the special player below, watch students march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama by clicking and dragging your mouse to rotate the panorama left or right.
Early in the afternoon, people were walking back and forth across the bridge, many taking pictures beneath the curved span emblazoned with the name "Edmund Pettus Bridge," just as it was 50 years ago.
Sam McDonald, 75, a retiree from Atlanta, said the events have been "wonderful," but it is sad that people need to commemorate the march because so many needs remain unmet.
Several states have passed more stringent voter ID rules since the Supreme Court in 2013 struck down a key provision of the landmark legislation that was birthed with the blood and sweat of the Selma protesters.
The high court ruled that the Voting Rights Act formula used to determine which parts of the country would need federal approval to change their voting procedures was outdated. The court told Congress to write a new formula reflecting current conditions, but Congress has yet to act.
"We ought to just go ahead and do the right," McDonald said. "Voting rights, human rights -- all the rights we deserve as people ... we're still trying to get what should belong to all of us. We're still fighting for it."
He added: "We're not celebrating -- we're still fighting."
In a sermonette at Brown Chapel, Martin Luther King III said he was not in a celebratory mood.
"I am concerned because our voting rights have been decimated," said King, eldest son of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. "We are a better nation than we are demonstrating."
Mary Stephens, 58, a nurse from Macon, Ga., said the weekend's events in Selma shouldn't be described as a celebration. "It is a continuation of the fight we have had for the past 50 years, and more," she said.
Many marchers carried signs calling for passage of a new Voting Rights Act. Others protested police brutality toward people of color.
One group came from St. Louis, an area roiled by a police killing of an unarmed black teenager last year.
"What we see is racism still alive and well," said Margaret Cole, 57, an insurance broker who lives in St. Louis County, Mo.
Debra Willis Hamilton, 43, from Cape Girardeau, Mo., a manager at a health insurance company, said the nation needs to call on people of good will to meet the challenges.
"We don't talk about the humanity of it, or the right and wrong," she said. "We just talk about the politics."
Holder, who will soon leave the Justice Department, called the Supreme Court ruling "profoundly flawed" but urged perseverance.
"I will never abandon this mission. Nor can you," Holder said. "If we are to honor those who came before us, and those still among us, we must match their sacrifice, their effort, with our own."
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