Ala. march marks historic voting rights battle

SELMA, Ala. -- The vice president and black leaders commemorating a famous civil rights march yesterday said efforts to diminish the impact of African-Americans' votes haven't stopped in the years since the 1965 Voting Rights Act added millions to Southern voter rolls.

More than 5,000 people followed Vice President Joe Biden and Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma's annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

The event commemorates the "Bloody Sunday" beating of voting rights marchers, including a young Lewis, by state troopers as they began a march to Montgomery in March 1965. The 50-mile march prompted Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act that struck down impediments to voting by African-Americans and ended all-white rule in the South.

Biden, the first sitting vice president to participate in the annual re-enactment, said nothing shaped his consciousness more than watching TV footage of the beatings. "We saw in stark relief the rank hatred, discrimination and violence that still existed in large parts of the nation," he said.

Biden said marchers "broke the back of the forces of evil," but that challenges to voting rights continue today. They include restrictions on early voting and registration drives and enactment of voter ID laws where no voter fraud has been shown.

"We will never give up or give in," Lewis told marchers.

Jesse Jackson said yesterday's event had a sense of urgency because the U.S. Supreme Court heard a request Wednesday by a mostly white Alabama county to strike down a key portion of the Voting Rights Act.

"We've had the right to vote for 48 years, but they've never stopped trying to diminish the impact of the votes," Jackson said.

Referring to the Voting Rights Act, the Rev. Al Sharpton said: "We are not here for a commemoration. We are here for a continuation."

The Supreme Court is weighing Shelby County's challenge to a portion of the law that requires states with a history of racial discrimination, mostly in the Deep South, to get Justice Department approval before implementing any changes in election laws. That includes everything from new voting districts to voter ID laws.