Obama commemorates 1965 civil rights march in Selma, AL

Run time: 02:43 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DdYByptC8mY   Posted on YouTube: March 04, 2007 By YouTube Member: TheBlueStateDOTcom Views on YouTube: 67799   Posted on DU: March 05, 2007 By DU Member: jefferson_dem Views on DU: 760

 

missed hearing Obama for some reason.:hi:

I like him in most ways. But Al has my heart still. :)

I stood on the steps of the Brown Chapel AME Church in 1995. You could feel the passion and determination that still lingers there. We walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. It was a powerful and emotionally moving experience. We also went to many other places of social significance while there. I was stunned to find old black only cemeteries, yes was a bit naive on that for some reason, racism did not end at death. I am learning more all the time though.

Here is an excellent OP-ED from 2005 -

Ghosts of the Edmund Pettus Bridge

By Bob Davis
Star Editorial Page Editor
08-07-2005

snip>

On Thursday — the 40th anniversary of Congressional passage of the Voting Rights Act — things were fairly quiet on either side of the bridge spanning the Alabama River. There were no marchers gathered willing to risk life and limb just to end segregation.

There were no brutal bigots wearing badges waiting to bust the heads of folks marching for equal rights, as had been the case in March of 1965. Images from Bloody Sunday jolted a nation into action, producing in less than five months a law to ensure all Americans could exercise their vote.

snip>

As many speakers at Selma’s Concordia College noted last week during a conference sponsored by the Democracy Project, progress has indeed been made since those dark days when a violent form of terrorism visited Alabama, Mississippi and the rest of the South. Don’t be thrown by the term “terrorists,” for that is precisely the description for those misguided souls who attempted to intimidate black folks from exercising their full constitutional rights.

A significant battle in this war against terrorists was passage of the Voting Rights Act, which was signed by President Johnson on Aug. 6, 1965. As Rep. Artur Davis, D-Birmingham, noted, it put into the law books that which had been promised 99 years earlier with the passage of the 15th Amendment, a law that declared voting could not be denied on the basis or race or national origin.


much more @ link:
http://www.annistonstar.com/opinion/2005/as-insight-0807-bdavis-5h05r5023.htm

I remain in awe of the fortitude and persistence of the Civil Rights movement back then and now. The Hip-Hop Caucus was amazing in DC in Jan. :woohoo: