Historic Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church was packed to its seams Sunday as the church hosted a service for the 49th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

The crowd of local elected officials, legislators and civil rights activists listened as speakers urged continued action to ensure voting rights and recollections of March 7, 1965.

After songs, scripture and a welcome from local elected officials, Alabama State University President Gwendolyn Boyd garnered a huge applause and brought the audience to its feet. Boyd addressed ongoing injustices and a need for a renewed effort to ensure civil rights.

“Yes we have come a long way, but we have a long way to go,” Boyd said. “We challenge, confront, oppose and exposed the evils of Jim Crow in the 1960s and the tactics of James Crow esquire in 2014. We need not get amnesia today and we don’t have time to rest”

U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., was one of nearly 600 marchers that crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday and recalled his experience in Selma during the civil rights movement.

“We could only go down and stand in a line to register to vote on the first and third Sunday of each month,” Lewis said There were black teachers and lawyer and doctors that were told they could not read. They failed the so-called literacy test.”

Lewis continued by describing the events of Bloody Sunday.

“Because of what happened to [Jimmy Lee Jackson], we made the decision, the people made a decision to march in an orderly, non-violent fashion,” he said. “We came to the highest point on the Edmund Pettus Bridge and down below we saw a sea of Alabama State Troopers. We got within hearing distance of the state troopers and a man spoke up and said … ‘this march will not be allowed to continue. I will give you three minutes to disperse and return to your church.’”

Lewis recalled civil rights activist Hosea Williams asking for a minute to pray.

“The major said ‘troopers advance,’” Lewis recalled. “They came toward us, beating us with night sticks, trampling us with horses. I thought I was going to die, but I believe god almighty kept me here for a purpose.”

Upon returning to Brown Chapel A.M.E Church, Lewis said thousands had gathered after hearing of the events.

“Someone said ‘say something John, speak to the people,” Lewis recalled. “I stood up and said ‘I don’t understand it.’”

The keynote speaker for the service was U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx. Speakers before joked that Foxx had quite a lot to live up to.

“I turned over to Secretary Foxx and said brother I surely don’t want to be in your shoes,” said James Davis, the presiding prelate of the ninth Episcopal District of the A.M.E. Church. “You must be a bad brother. They put you behind all of that and expect you to say something other than that’s what I was going to say.”

Though Foxx addressed many of the same topics as previous speakers, he said future generations must continue to fight for equal rights.

“Much like myself, we are walking in the shadows of giants,” Foxx joked. “Today provides us with an eloquent example of those who came before and paved the way. We must pick up the torch and keep pushing.”