Brown chapel to host congressman
Published 8:36 pm Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Leaders of a Selma historic church will contribute to the annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee celebration by hosting a commemoration at their church.
The historic Brown Chapel AME Church is conducting their annual commemoration Sunday of Bloody Sunday.
A Congressional delegation, led by U.S. Rep. John Lewis, who himself was beaten during Bloody Sunday, will be in attendance. U. S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx serving as the keynote speaker.
The church’s pulpit was the venue where civil rights activist Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and thousands of others used to launch the march, event chairman Juanda Maxwell said.
“It’s teaching moment,” Maxwell said. “It reminds us those who were there of an age group, and also it teaches those who were not there.”
The sacrifices made at Bloody Sunday and the successful Selma-to Montgomery march eventually led to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 passage.
“It’s not written in stone that we will always have the Voting Rights Act,” Maxwell said. “It’s up to us as a group of people to forever to keep it in front our communities as what we should have, so we will continue to keep it.”
The ceremony begins at 11 a.m.