Though the crowds will be a little smaller than last year, we welcome all our visitors to Selma for this weekend’s commemoration of Bloody Sunday.

It’s now been 51 years now since a group of marchers led by now Congressman John Lewis and the late Rev. Hosea Williams led a group from Brown Chapel AME Church across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they were met with force by Alabama State Troopers, Dallas County sheriff’s deputies and other law enforcement.

A couple of weeks later, that group was joined by thousands of others from across the country on a march to the Alabama Capitol.

The blood shed that day and the attention brought to the march and its impact on our country, notably the Voting Rights Act of 1965, will be remembered for generations to come.

We hope everyone has a good time in Selma this weekend, reliving history and making new memories.

The rest of us Selma residents need to be a little patient with the crowds and road closures. Come Monday, life will be back to normal.