Obama, at Selma Memorial, Says, ‘We Know the March Is Not Yet Over’

Reported By PETER BAKER and RICHARD FAUSSET, The New York Times, 03/07/15

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President Obama and Representative John Lewis led thousands in a commemorative march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

SELMA, Ala. — As a new generation struggles over race and power in America, President Obama and a host of political figures from both parties came here on Saturday, to the site of one of the most searing days of the civil rights era, to reflect on how far the country has come and how far it still has to go.

Fifty years after peaceful protesters trying to cross a bridge were beaten by police officers with billy clubs, shocking the nation and leading to passage of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965, the nation’s first African-American president led a bipartisan, biracial testimonial to the pioneers whose courage helped pave the way for his own election to the highest office of the land.

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