Vice President Kamala Harris travels to Selma, Alabama, on Sunday to commemorate the 59th anniversary of a historic civil rights moment
WASHINGTON — Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Selma, Alabama, on Sunday to commemorate the 59th anniversary of a historic civil rights moment.
Harris will speak as part of the annual commemoration of “Bloody Sunday,” on the bridge where white state troopers attacked black voting rights demonstrators trying to cross on March 7, 1965.
The images of violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge — originally named for a Confederate general — shocked the nation and helped galvanize support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act, which removed barriers to African Americans voting and ended all-white rule in the United States. American South.
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre announced Harris’ upcoming visit during a briefing with reporters on Tuesday. Harris attended the memorial in 2022 and President Joe Biden visited last year. Both used their previous speeches to emphasize the importance of voting rights and to decry what they called Republican-led efforts to undermine it.
The annual commemoration has become a regular stop for politicians to pay tribute to the fight for voting rights in America and to court black voters in election years.
During the 2020 election, Biden spoke at Selma’s historic Brown Chapel AME Church, hours after strong support from Black voters in South Carolina propelled Biden to his first primary victory. He also visited the city as vice president in 2013.
President Barack Obama spoke in Selma in 2015 to mark the 50th anniversary of the 1965 marches.