In March, overcast skies seemed to be the only threat staring down marchers crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, where 61 years ago, civil rights activists attempting to cross while protesting voting hindrances were beaten by law enforcement. 

This year at the annual event, known as the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee, clouds did not give way to rain during the march, not that it would have mattered. Determination was in the air. 

April England-Albright, a lawyer and co-founder of Black Voters Matter, which supports individuals and organizations trying to obtain social justice, joined the marchers. She says there are legal challenges ahead, and she is ready to face them. Her organization was conceived during Selma's 2000 mayoral race, in which Joe Smitherman, the city's mayor for 35-plus years, was voted out after his opponent's successful “Joe Gotta Go” campaign. Smitherman had publicly called Martin Luther King Jr. “Martin Luther Coon” during the Civil Rights Movement.

“We got him out of office,” England-Albright says. “So if we can use elections to remove white supremacists from this democracy and build something new, we want to be down with that all the time.” 

She says attending the march reminds her of what her group needs to do.

“Selma is a community that gave so much but received so little,” England-Albright says. 

This year, about 2,000 people convened at the bridge, carrying signs announcing their allegiance to an organization or to a cause. The jubilee’s founders, married couple Hank and Rose Saunders, are lawyers who met at Harvard. In the 1970s, Rose Saunders (who now goes by the name Faya Ora Rose Touré) became the first African American female judge in Alabama. Hank Saunders served as a state senator from 1983 to 2019. They are among the co-founders of the Alabama Black Lawyers Association and the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute.

Many signs paid homage to civil rights icons, including Rep. John Lewis, who popularized the term “good trouble” and attempted to lead the original group of demonstrators across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.  Lewis and other demonstrators, however, were confronted and beaten by law enforcement. Bloody Sunday, as the day came to be known, aired on national TV.  Two weeks later, King and 3,200 protesters marched peacefully over the bridge on their way to Montgomery. 

Other signs and T-shirts bore the likeness of the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, the founder of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition, who died a few weeks before the march. Jackson saw the Bloody Sunday footage on television when he was a student at the Chicago Theological Seminary.  His son Yusef Jackson, a lawyer and the CEO of Rainbow PUSH, says his father was told by the seminary head to stay in school, but he felt he needed to do something. So Jesse Jackson rounded up several students and drove through the night to Selma, Yusef Jackson told the ABA Journal. A delegation from the Chicago-based Rainbow PUSH Coalition traveled by bus to Selma to march this year. 

Jesse Jackson’s presence was missed, says Ryan Haygood, a lawyer who is president and CEO of the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.

“For the first time, he wasn’t there. It was both humbling and a challenge to keep Selma going. Now is a good time to be a lawyer. I need for lawyers to lawyer—and lawyer courageously. If ever there was a time to resist and act, it’s now. We need the courts and courageous lawyering to stem the tide,” adds Haygood, who has made the journey about 20 times.

Paulette Brown, a past ABA president, has attended the march numerous times, including this year. Brown, who does consulting work, says voter suppression is a key concern. 

“The administration has sued several states that have refused to produce voters’ names, dates of birth and other key identifiers, including the last four digits of Social Security numbers,” Brown says. “Lawyers should be very concerned about the SAVE America Act; it’s a very serious form of voter suppression.”

The first time she marched across the bridge, her initial reaction was one of awe. 

“I was in the front, so it was when I got across and looked back at the masses of people yet to cross the bridge—oh, my goodness. People are still invested. There are still foot soldiers. My thought is, how do we leverage this moment and put it into action?”  Brown says.

As the president and director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, lawyer Damon T. Hewitt and his team organized two panel discussions that Brown, Haygood and other lawyers participated in during the weekend called “Our Selma Moment: Fighting & Building.” One of his concerns is “a threat to processes and systems,” such as not counting absentee ballots or even the seizing of voting machines themselves. 

“Republicans are making it harder to vote. They are trying to silence voices and suppress voters,” he said.

Tonya White-Evans, one of the marchers, was born in Selma and now works as a paralegal at the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery.  She and family members travel to Selma to cross the Pettus Bridge yearly. This year, the theme of the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee was “All Boots on the Bridge,” and the event attracted vendors selling colorful beads, jewelry, T-shirts and barbecue pulled hot off the grill. And there is live entertainment along with workshops, commemorative tributes, a scholarship pageant and a documentary screening. 

 “Selma is the city the world forgot, until its Jubilee,” White-Evans says.

Still, travelers venture to Selma for different reasons. Jennifer Toth, a retired lawyer from Washington, D.C., has crossed the Pettus twice. The first time, it was with her church members who were taking a civil rights pilgrimage.

“We were in Atlanta, Birmingham and here in Selma,” Toth says. “That was interesting to me. I’ve always wanted to do that, so that is why I went then. This time, I wanted to march for racial justice, and that is my motivation.” 

Similar views were expressed by A. Britton O’Shields, 37, from Birmingham, Alabama, whose parents first took her over the Pettus Bridge when she turned 18. Later, she became a personal injury lawyer and now works for the Alabama Council on American-Islamic Relations. She traveled to Selma to attend the march. 

Her work includes helping inform citizens of their rights regarding Immigration and Customs Enforcement deployments.  Operation Metro Surge, the deployment of 3,000 immigration agents into Minnesota by President Donald Trump, detained members of Somali community in the state, some of whom were U.S. citizens. A lawsuit, which is ongoing, was brought by the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, and a judge ruled this month that ICE agents detained people illegally based on their race. 

O’Shields works closely with the ACLU of Alabama and the Alabama Coalition for Immigrant Justice, including distributing literature and answering questions about ICE processes in communities. 

“I know members of the Muslim community whose lives have been infringed upon,” she says. 

Yusef Jackson visited Minnesota after seeing the arrests of members of the Muslim community in media reports.  The arrests were followed by protests and the killings of two U.S. citizens, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, by ICE agents.

“Now we find a crossroad,” says Jackson, who joined marchers as they crossed the Pettus Bridge the day after his father’s funeral in Chicago.

“Our citizens’ rights are being curtailed at every turn. We are finding reduced funding for schools. Reduced funding for health care. Reduced funding for food. Reduced funding or housing. And we have an option, and that’s to stand up. We either go backward out of fear and stay home, and say, ‘This is how it is,’ or we can stand up for our rights,” he says. 

Updated March 30 to correct the date of the Pettus Bridge march.