On the weekend of March 7-8, 2015, tens of thousands converged on tiny Selma, Alabama, for events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the event known as “Bloody Sunday,” where civil rights workers attempting to march from Selma to Montgomery were severely beaten by state and local police as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965. National outrage from the televised coverage of the violence is seen as a turning point that led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act later that year.
Among the thousands in attendance were a number of United Methodists — some of whom had traveled to Selma for the original marches while they were seminary students — and one retired United Methodist bishop who takes his own seminary students to Selma every year on a civil rights pilgrimage.
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