ATLANTA — This year marks the 60th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act becoming law.
But before that was Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama.
Channel 2′s Fred Blankenship returned to Selma to relive that dark moment with the civil rights legend at the center of it.
On March 7, 1965, hundreds of civil rights advocates, including John Lewis, gathered for a peaceful march for voting rights in Selma.
But that peace was shattered on the Edmund Pettus Bridge by Alabama State Troopers.
“They came toward us. Beating us with nightsticks, trampled by horses, releasing the tear gas. I thought I was gonna die on that bridge. I thought I saw death,” Lewis said.
The attack left Lewis hospitalized with a cracked skull.
Fifty years later in 2015, Blankenship walked with Congressman Lewis along that same bridge.
“How do you feel when you come back here 50 years later?” Blankenship asked.
“Well to come back here 50 years later I feel like I’m standing on almost a sacred spot. Some of us gave a little blood on this spot, some of us almost died for the right to vote,” Lewis replied. “I thought we were being arrested and taken to jail. I didn’t have any idea that we were being beaten, tear-gassed and trampled by horses.”
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Two days after Bloody Sunday, Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and religious leaders led another march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
That night, a white minister, Reverend James Reeb, was attacked and killed by segregationists.
President Lyndon Johnson addressed the nation about the violence at Selma.
Days after Johnson’s speech, Lewis, King, and others marched from Selma to Montgomery.
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Five months later, Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law.
“What kind of historic moment was that for you?” Blankenship asked.
“We said it was worth it... the blood, the beatings, the jailing, it was all worth it,” Lewis replied.
Lewis received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011.
He died in 2020 at the age of 80 after a battle with pancreatic cancer.
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