Hundreds took to the Brooklyn Bridge on March 9 to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the historic yet violent civil rights march across an Alabama bridge, including those who originally made the walk all those years ago.
Hundreds marched across the Edmund Pettis Bridge in Selma, AL on March 7, 1965 to protest the treatment of Black Americans and demand their right to vote. After crossing the span, they were met with state troopers who brutally beat them with batons and tear gas — the images of which led to a national outcry. Two days later, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led another symbolic march to the same bridge, known as Turn Around Tuesday, on March 9, 1965.
Well over half a century later, some of those who walked that path and witnessed the bloodshed rallied outside of New York City Hall on Sunday — including Harriet Michel, who held up a photograph taken of her tending to a man left bloodied in the attack.
“I was in Alabama in March, 1965 and I’m here today, still marching,” Michel said. “They ran us down with horses and attacked us with billy clubs. We were beaten and bloodied. The man in this photo had his cheek split wide open. Many marchers required medical attention. Since the national press, both print and television, were on hand to cover the demonstrations, our melee was recorded and shown on television that night and featured in newspapers.”
Those who saw the pain and suffering in that time say they again see the rise of hatred, this time in the White House.
Former Manhattan Borough President C. Virginia Fields says she has seen the process of the Civil Rights movement, marched in it as a teenager with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and spent six days in jail, but fears that the progress is being lost during the Trump administration.
“Voting Rights Act, civil rights, education, employment, all of the gains are under attack, and we cannot allow those people to push us back,” Fields said. “There’s mad men, Trump and Musk. Republicans are sitting there knowing it was wrong. It’s up to us just as we did in 1965.”
Organized by civil rights attorney Norman Siegel and Michel, the participants looked to respect the past and fight for the future by leading a march over the Brooklyn Bridge.
Children carried signs quoting John Lewis reading “Good trouble” while one senior lugged a sign declaring “back to the bridges.” Those marching said they refuse to go back to a time of more discrimination and hatred in America.
“For some Americans, the mantra Make America Great Again means going back, going back to a period when black folks had to sit in the back of the bus, women were relegated to the kitchen, and LGBTQ+ members to the closet,” Siegel said.
