Selma March Ends With Call to Fight
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MONTGOMERY, Ala. — Black leaders must remember the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr. and “get into the trenches” to fight racial profiling and attacks on affirmative action, the Rev. Al Sharpton said Saturday at the finale of a voting rights commemoration.
“We’re here today to reconnect with the giants that brought us this far,” he told about 500 people in the same downtown Montgomery church where King preached in the 1950s.
Sharpton and Martin Luther King III, who is president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, spoke at the conclusion of a weeklong march from Selma retracing the footsteps of the 1965 march that led to passage of the Voting Rights Act.
About 120 mainly college and high school students completed the 54-mile trek Saturday. Their journey began March 6, the day after President Clinton joined in the 35th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” confrontation at Selma that put the nation’s focus on the voting rights crusade.
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