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Obama Selma giving Gold Metals

select-fireselect-fire Member Posts: 69,540 ✭✭✭✭
edited March 2015 in General Discussion
Selma marchers awarded Congressional Gold Medal


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President Barack Obama signs legislation awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to the people who participated in the "Bloody Sunday" march, Turnaround Tuesday, or the final Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March in March 1965. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) President Barack Obama signs legislation awarding a Congressional Gold Medal to the people who participated in the "Bloody Sunday" march, Turnaround Tuesday, or the final Selma to Montgomery Voting Rights March in March 1965. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin)

SELMA, AL (RNN) - President Barack Obama signed HR 431 into law on Saturday while aboard Air Force One, awarding Congressional Gold Medals to those who marched in Selma in 1965

Obama was flying to Selma, AL, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" marches that took place on March 7, 1965.

The foot soldiers who marched across Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge were met with violence and brutality that galvanized a nationwide movement and led to the passage of of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Marchers returned two days later on March 9, 1965, to march again in what has been referred to as "Turnaround Tuesday." This march was not marred with the same violence as "Bloody Sunday."

Later in March 1965, another march from Selma to the steps of the Alabama Capitol Building in Montgomery, AL, was completed. This march, like those before it, called for equal voting rights.

Citing the First Amendment, a Montgomery-area judge had ruled on March 17 that the marchers were allowed to march without restrictions.

The final trek from Selma to Montgomery lasted from March 21 to March 25 and signified a victory for the civil rights movement. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law less than five months later, on Aug. 6, 1965.

All of those marchers have been recognized with the passage of HR 431.

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