Obama prepares to honor watershed moment at Selma

In this March 7, 1965, file photo, state troopers use clubs against participants of a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala. At foreground right, John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, is beaten by a state trooper.(Photo: AP)civiEight years ago, an up-and-coming black politician from Chicago talked about how he owed his career to bloodshed on a bridge in Selma, Ala."I'm here because somebody marched," then-senator Barack Obama said in Selma that day. "I'm here because you all sacrificed for me."Now the first African-American president of the United States, Obama returns to Selma on Saturday along with thousands of others who have led very different lives because of what happened there 50 years ago.The police attack on civil rights marchers at the Edmund Pettus Bridge led, over time, to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a transformation of American politics, government and society itself.Legislation removed barriers that had prevented black people from voting. Millions joined voting rolls across the country, and thousands went on to win elections to offices in city halls, state legislatures, Congress, and, eventually, the White House.Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., one of those beaten in Selma on March 7, 1965, told USA TODAY that "some of us gave a little blood on that bridge to redeem the soul of America, to make America better."Obama and others attending Selma events this weekend are expected to praise racial progress but also address many remaining challenges. The president and allies have accused some states of seeking to dilute minority votes through voter identification laws and various redistricting plans. The Selma commemoration also takes place amid tense police-minority relations across the country.Still, the events of Selma transformed the nation, including its politics.Black voters, reliably Republican for decades following the Civil War, are now overwhelmingly Democratic. The Republican Party — once anathema in the South — is now predominantly white and dominant in many Southern states. Former president George W. Bush and other Republicans are scheduled to attend this weekend's events in Selma.Coming a year after the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 quickened the pace of integration in the United States, bringing social and economic benefits.Taylor Branch, the author of a three-volume history of Martin Luther King Jr., and the civil rights movement, said it helped de-stigmatize the South, which had suffered economically under the weight of legalized racism. In many ways, Branch said, everyone owes a debt to the black voting rights movement."It wasn't just for black people," he said. " It was about how or democracy functions."Quite a different world from the one that marchers in Selma faced in early 1965.Civil rights groups had been demonstrating for years in Selma and Dallas County, Ala., where only 1% of voting age blacks were registered the vote and white officials worked to keep that number low.During a night demonstration in nearby Marion on Feb. 18, police shot and killed 26-year-old Jimmie Lee Jackson. His death inspired calls for a march from Selma to Montgomery to deliver the voting rights message directly to the Alabama governor, the proto-segregationist George C. Wallace.Organizers set the march for March 7, a Sunday. As marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge — named for a Confederate general and former Ku Klux Klan leader — they confronted a phalanx of state troopers and sheriff's deputies, some on horseback.When the marchers refused demands to disperse, troopers attacked with billy clubs, bullwhips and tear gas, injuring more than 50 people.Television news cameras captured the attack that galvanized the nation. ABC famously showed footage after breaking into its prime-time movie: Judgement at Nuremberg.Last VideoNext VideoAfter "Bloody Sunday," events cascaded quickly:• March 9: King, who had been out of town the day of the attack, prepared a restart of the march. But a federal judge had issued an order against it, pending a hearing, and King retreated in an event known as "Turnaround Tuesday."That night, a Unitarian minister from Boston names James Reeb — one of many supporters who had streamed into Selma to march — was clubbed unconscious by a Klansman. He died two days later.• March 15: President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress to back new voting rights legislation (and to echo a mantra of the marchers: "We shall overcome").• March 17: U.S. District Judge Frank Johnson cleared the way for the Selma-to-Montgomery march.• March 21: The trek began. It ended four days later at the statehouse in Montgomery with one of King's most famous speeches about the coming victory of voting rights: "How long? Not long! — because the are of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice."Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act on Aug. 6, 1965.This weekend, "the world will turn its eyes to Selma again," Obama said last week. He and first lady Michelle Obama are taking daughters Malia and Sasha to the Selma event."Because there are going to be marches for them to march, and struggles for them to fight," Obama said. "And if we've done our job, then that next generation is going to be picking up the torch, as well."