By Blake Deshazo

The Selma Times-Journal

After an estimated 40,000 people showed up to hear President Barack Obama speak at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the amount of people doubled Sunday to make the journey across the historic bridge where history changed 50 years ago.

People waited as far as the eye could to get across the bridge, and the crowd was filled with people of every kind from every place.

Tom Spach, who came from Atlanta, made the trip to Selma to celebrate freedom.

“It’s very moving to be with all of these people who are here to claim the freedom that our country offers to them and to do it stridently and nonviolently,” Spach said.

Sandra Hughes, who walked across the bridge with Spach, was here to remember those that marched 50 years ago and to show that there is still work that needs to be done.

“I’m here to commemorate the courage and the freedoms that we have gained, but also to remember there still are injustices, and we still have our part to play in righting those injustices and doing it nonviolently and peacefully,” Hughes said.

Richard Eubanks, who came to Selma from Ocean Springs, Miss., brought his children here to show them that their rights were not given to them.

“I wanted to be here for my children, so they could see this and experience this,” Eubanks said after making the trip back over the bridge. “They’re 11, 9 and 7-years-old, and they need to experience this because they don’t realize how hard the marches were. There was no place for them to sleep along the way. They had to sleep in fields on the way. I wanted my children to be able to know the rights that they have right now were fought for, and we can’t take that for granted.”

Selma is home for Jennie Beard, and she wanted to honor her mother, Bernice Sharpe.

“My mother, who is dead now, used to talk and tell us about how they would march across that bridge, and they would be beaten,” Beard said. “I was so glad to march with my grandchildren from Tennessee to relive and walk across this same bridge. We were marching in my mother’s memory. She marched across that bridge too.”

Valerie Payne, who is originally from Uniontown, drove nine hours to Selma from Forth Worth, Texas to bring her daughters here.

“I wanted my kids to experience this. We’ve been talking about black history and the importance of it and all of the things that black people have done to make this country a better place,” Payne said. “I want them to be proud and wanted them to witness it for themselves and be proud and know that they should walk straight with their heads up high at all times.”

Claire Wright, who marched across the bridge two years ago, returned to do so again.

“I have been very moved by all the learning that I have been doing over the last 10 years about Martin Luther King and what he stood for, and all of the events of the Civil Rights Movement,” Wright said. “I read John Lewis’ [book], and it just captures my heart and my sense of justice, and I wanted to be here to celebrate this.”