President Barack Obama was at Selma, Alabama, on Saturday for the 50th anniversary of the 1965 civil rights march in which black protesters were beaten, trampled and tear-gassed by police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Obama and his family joined other Americans including those who witnessed the “Bloody Sunday” in a march across the same bridge.
Speaking at the event, Obama said America’s racial history “still casts its long shadow” despite a half-century of progress toward a more perfect union.
He also said that police discrimination against blacks is not confined to Ferguson, Missouri — but that it’s also no longer endemic or sanctioned by law in America.
Thousands from across the U.S. packed the riverside town for commemorations of the march on March 7, 1965.