Attorney General

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tty. Gene.

Merrick Garland told parishioners at a church service in Selma commemorating the 59th anniversary of the attack by Alabama law officers on civil rights protesters that voting rights are in jeopardy in much of the country.

Garland told a Bloody Sunday service that decisions by the Supreme Court and lower courts since 2006 have weakened the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which was passed in the wake of the police attack. The demonstrators were beaten by officers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965, as they tried to march through Alabama in support of voting rights. Vice President Kamala Harris

was planned

leads the annual march across the bridge on Sunday afternoon.

The march and Garland’s speech are among dozens of events during the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, which started Thursday and culminated Sunday.

Garland said the rulings have jeopardized the voting rights of Black Americans.

Since that one [court] There has been a dramatic increase in legislative actions that are making it more difficult for millions of eligible voters to cast ballots and elect representatives of their choice, Garland told worshipers at Selmas Tabernacle Baptist Church, the site of one of the nation’s first mass gatherings. voting rights movement.

These measures include practices and procedures that make voting more difficult; redistributing maps that disadvantage minorities; and changes in voting administration that reduce the authority of locally elected or nonpartisan election administrators, he said. Such measures threaten the foundation of our system of government.

Harris spoke at a rally near the bridge after the march about the legacy of the civil rights movement, spoke about the ongoing work to achieve justice for all and encouraged Americans to continue the fight for basic freedoms that are under attack across the country .

Khadidah Stone, 27, part of a crowd that gathered at the bridge in light rain Sunday before the march, sees the work of today’s activists as an extension of those who were attacked in Selma in 1965. Stone works for the voter group Alabama Forward, and was a plaintiff in the voting rights lawsuit against the state that led to its founding

one second extra

Alabama’s congressional district with a significant number of black voters. Voters in that district will cast their first votes on Tuesday.

We have to keep fighting, because

she

[voting rights] are under attack, Stone said.

The Selma commemoration is a frequent stop for Democratic politicians paying tribute to the voting rights movement. Some in the crowd gathered to watch Harris express concerns about the upcoming November election and what appears to be a looming rematch between President

Joe

Biden and former president

Donald

Trump.

Nita Hill wore a hat that read “Good Trouble,” a phrase associated with the late Rep. John Lewis, who was struck on the bridge during Bloody Sunday. Hill, 70, said it is important for Biden supporters to vote in November.

“I believe Trump is trying to take us back,” said Hill, a retired university payroll specialist.

Harris joined the march in 2022 and called the site sacred ground

give a speech asking for suggestions

Congress

in a speech

defend democracy by protecting

the

the right to vote. On that anniversary, Harris spoke of demonstrators whose peaceful protest was met with crushing violence.

They knelt when state forces attacked, she said at the time. They were praying when the batons struck.

Images of the violence at the bridge stunned Americans, helping to galvanize support for passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. The law removed barriers that prohibited black people from voting.

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, a South Carolina Democrat who is leading a pilgrimage to Selma, said he wants to remind people that we are celebrating an event that put this country on a better path to a more perfect union, but the right to vote is still not guaranteed.

Clyburn sees Selma as the center of the 1960s voting rights movement, at a time when

currently

his attempts to reduce those rights.

The Voting Rights Act of 1965 became a reality in August 1965 because of what happened on March 7

e

of 1965, Clyburn said.

We are at a turning point in this country, he added. And hopefully this year’s march will allow people to take stock of where we are.

Clyburn said he hopes the weekend in Alabama will bring energy and unity to the civil rights movement, and also benefit the city of Selma.

We need to do something to develop the waterfront, we need to do something that brings industry back to Selma, Clyburn said. We have to do something to make up for the fact that they lost that military installation there that provided all the jobs. All that is disappearing, there is nothing to keep young people involved in the development of their community.

Chandler writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Terry Spencer in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Stephen Groves in Washington and Jeff Martin in Atlanta contributed to this report.