Dick Durbin: “today marks the 51st anniversary of what has come to be known as Bloody Sunday. On March 7, 1965, John Lewis and…”

“today marks the 51st anniversary of what has come to be known as Bloody Sunday. On March 7, 1965, John Lewis and Reverend Hosea Williams led 600 brave civil rights activists in a march over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. These courageous men, women, and children gathered to draw attention to the systematic disenfranchisement of African Americans in Alabama and throughout much of the Deep South. They marched in pursuit of the most fundamental right, the right preservative of all others--the right to vote. What they received that day, however, were brutal beatings from police batons as State troopers turned them back and chased them down. More than 50 of the demonstrators were injured. John Lewis was beaten unconscious and nearly killed. Ten days later, Federal district court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr., granted protection to the activists, ruling that they were permitted to march from Selma to the State capitol in Montgomery. In the historic order he issued, Judge Johnson wrote: ``The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups. Indeed, where, as here, minorities have been harassed, coerced and intimidated, group association may be the only realistic way of exercising such rights. . . .…”