A look back at Bloody Sunday’s 50th anniversary

SELMA, Ala. (UM News)

To commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day, UM News revisits its 2015 trip to Selma, Alabama, to cover the 50^th anniversary of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches to protest racial segregation and support the rights of African Americans to vote.

Retired bishop Woodie White and his students from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, along with other United Methodists, joined an estimated crowd of 80,000 who packed Selma, Alabama, March 7-8, 2015, for a weekend of events including a speech by President Barack Obama. The trip culminated with a march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, where a violent confrontation between police and peaceful marchers occurred March 8, 1965. The clash helped bring about passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

See images and hear audio from the day in video above.

Read more about the anniversary march in our story, United Methodists Return for Bloody Sunday 50th.

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Members of four annual conferences in the U.S. Northeast cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., where police attacked peaceful marchers on March 7, 1965, on what is known as Bloody Sunday. The visit was part of the group’s July 12-19 Civil Rights Journey, a tour of sacred sites of the Civil Rights Movement. Photo by Jeannie Schott, Western Pennsylvania Conference.

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