Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Alabama this weekend to commemorate a key moment in the civil rights movement
MONTGOMERY, Ala. –Vice President Kamala Harris is heading to Alabama this weekend to commemorate a key moment in the civil rights movement.
Harris will speak in Selma at an event marking the 57th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the day in 1965 when white police attacked black suffrage marchers.
Harris will also participate in the annual event’s symbolic march across the bridge. Several other members of President Joe Biden’s administration will also attend the event, including Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, Administrator of the Michael Regan Environmental Protection Agency.
On March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers beat and gassed hundreds of protesters. The confrontation set the stage weeks later for the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to lead the massive march from Selma to Montgomery for the vote.
Events galvanized support for passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year.
Harris is the first female U.S. vice president and the first black woman and person of South Asian descent to hold the office.
