Biden Leads 'Bloody Sunday' Civil Rights March

Voting rights fight still going on, he says at Selma re-enactment
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Mar 4, 2013 12:03 AM CST
Biden Leads 'Bloody Sunday' Civil Rights March
Vice President Joe Biden embraces Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., as they prepare to lead a group across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala.    (AP Photo/Dave Martin)

Joe Biden vowed to keep up the fight for voting rights as he led a re-enactment of the 1965 "Bloody Sunday" civil rights march in Selma, Ala., yesterday. Biden is the first sitting vice president to take part in the annual march, which commemorates a march where voting rights activists were badly beaten by state troopers with clubs, the Hill reports. The shocking images of bloodied protesters helped spur Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act the same year.

"There's courage and there is courage," said Biden, who led the march alongside civil rights activist Rep. John Lewis. "There's a different kind of courage to stand there and face someone with a club in their hand. There's the courage to look evil in the eye, fight against it, never give up." Biden and other speakers including Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton stressed that the fight for civil rights is still going on, with voting rights facing challenges including a challenge to key Voting Rights Act provisions now before the Supreme Court, the AP adds. (More Selma to Montgomery stories.)

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