US activists, politicians rally on anniversary of civil rights march

Thousands of activists, politicians, and civil rights leaders descended on Selma, Alabama, this weekend to mark the 61st anniversary of the Bloody Sunday march, a pivotal 1965 event where state troopers attacked voting rights demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. The commemoration, which includes a symbolic march across the bridge, is shadowed by contemporary political concerns. Organizers and participants like 78-year-old Charles Mauldin, who was beaten during the original march, expressed fears that decades of voting rights progress could be undone by a current case before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Supreme Court is poised to rule soon on a Louisiana case that challenges the role of race in drawing congressional districts, a practice protected under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. This provision has been instrumental in creating majority-minority districts to ensure Black and Latino voters can elect their preferred candidates. A ruling that limits or prohibits the consideration of race could have sweeping consequences, potentially enabling Republican-controlled state legislatures to redraw maps in ways that dilute minority voting power and reduce the number of districts that tend to favor Democratic candidates. The rally in Selma thus served as both a historical remembrance and a urgent call to political action to defend voting rights.