Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 6, 1995 TAG: 9503080031
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: SELMA, ALA. LENGTH: Medium
It was on March 7, 1965, that white lawmen beat and gassed hundreds of marchers trying to cross Edmund Pettus Bridge. Footage of the beatings ran on national television, sparking outrage and leading to passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act, which outlawed literacy tests in many Southern states.
Two weeks later, Martin Luther King Jr. led an even bigger march all the way to the steps of the state Capitol in Montgomery.
A cold rain fell Sunday on demonstrators gathered outside the National Voting Rights Institute as they prepared to march once again across the bridge named for a Confederate general. The group also planned to make the 54-mile journey to Montgomery for a rally Saturday; a small number of them will walk.
``This 30th anniversary is very timely because once again we're having to fight for our voting rights,'' said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, blasting courts that have struck down majority black congressional districts.
Lowery, Jesse Jackson and U.S. Reps. John Lewis and Cynthia McKinney, both Georgia Democrats, joined in ceremonies at the Brown Chapel AME Church, also the launching site of the first march. Lewis and another leader of the original march, Hosea Williams, received keys to the city from Joe Smitherman, Selma's white segregationist mayor in 1965. He now says he was wrong and continues to hold the top government job in a city with a black majority.
``You may have lost an enemy with those billy whips and all those kind of things, but you do have an enemy today, I have an enemy today, and that's those congressmen in their Brooks Brothers suits,'' said Smitherman.
``In the name of conservatism and balancing the budget, they're going to cut programs that affect whites and blacks,'' he said.
by CNB