Vice President Kamala Harris returns to Selma to mark ‘Bloody Sunday’ anniversary

(SELMA, Ala.) — Vice President Kamala Harris will speak on Sunday afternoon in Selma, Alabama, to mark the 59th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” a milestone moment in the civil rights movement.

She’ll participate in the annual crossing jubilee of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, originally named after a Confederate general, where Alabama state troopers infamously attacked Black demonstrators as they marched for voting rights on March 7, 1965.

The brutality stunned many across the country and galvanized support for the landmark Voting Rights Act.

Harris’ visit on Sunday also comes in an election year as she and President Joe Biden seek to cement their standing with Black voters and tout their continued focus on voting rights, which has largely been stalled in Congress — drawing some progressive criticism that the White House could do more on its own.

Senate Democrats last month reintroduced a major proposal to strengthen voting rights, named in honor of the late congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis, who was beaten to the point of a skull fracture while marching across the bridge in Selma 59 years ago.

Harris is expected to once again call on Congress to act, as she did two years ago in Selma, also on the anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”

“While there, she will deliver remarks honoring the legacy of the civil rights movement and the Biden-Harris administration’s continued work to achieve justice for all and encourage Americans to continue the fight for fundamental freedoms,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters last week.

Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., whose district includes Selma, Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Rev. Al Sharpton are expected to attend Sunday’s bridge crossing along with second gentleman Doug Emhoff.

Selma is also working to expand its high-speed fiber broadband access, which local officials told ABC News is important for empowering residents.

“To be able to circulate factual information quickly, succinctly, that creates a more educated community,” Selma Mayor James Perkins Jr. said in an interview.

Selma University’s president, Stanford Angion, echoed that, saying, “I’m excited because digital equity and being able to reach people in real time is really going to be significant, I think, in increasing voter participation.”

Harris, the nation’s first Black vice president, is a key figure in the administration’s efforts to enact more voting rights legislation — which hasn’t moved out of the Senate because it lacks the support of 10 Republicans to overcome the body’s filibuster rule.

Democrats say the bill would restore a provision requiring states and municipalities with a history of voter discrimination to obtain federal “preclearance” before changing voting laws.

Conservatives oppose what they call federal intrusion into state-run elections.

Biden and Harris have made democracy and individual rights key parts of their campaign message while seeking to draw a contrast with former President Donald Trump, who has been hammering the White House over high inflation, immigration and foreign policy.

The Biden-Harris campaign has fired back, arguing Trump, who looks likely to soon clinch the 2024 Republican nomination, is an anti-democratic candidate while pointing to his role in ending Roe v. Wade’s guarantee to abortion access.

Perkins, the Selma mayor, called out the Republican-led scrutiny of diversity and inclusion efforts and new restrictions on ballot access.

“This is really a dangerous time. And this is a very disenfranchising moment for us,” he said. “I don’t know that people really fully understand how critical this is. But it is something that we really need to be paying attention to.”

The vice president’s appearance in Selma comes a day after a New York Times and Siena College poll continued to show trouble for Biden in a hypothetical rematch with Trump, the latest in a long string of poor polling for him — but his campaign threw cold water on that.

“Polling continues to be at odds with how Americans vote, and consistently overestimates Donald Trump while underestimating President Biden,” Biden-Harris communications director Michael Tyler argued in a statement.

In addition to spearheading voting rights for the Biden administration, Harris has become its main messenger on abortion rights in the wake of the Supreme Court reversing Roe two years ago. She could raise the issue in Alabama after the state Supreme Court upended access to in vitro fertilization by ruling last month that embryos are children under the law.

Local lawmakers, including many Republicans, are pushing to protect IVF access despite the court ruling.

Harris launched a “reproductive rights tour” on the 51st anniversary of the Roe decision in battleground Wisconsin, where first lady Jill Biden is on Sunday to promote the “Women for Biden-Harris” program and warn against Trump by name.

Alabama is one of 16 states and territories that will vote on Super Tuesday. It’s also the home state of Sen. Katie Britt, who will deliver the State of the Union response for Republicans on Thursday.

Biden, who made a commemorative trip to Selma last year, posted on social media about the 59th anniversary on Sunday.

“Fifty-nine years ago, brave Americans sought to cross a bridge named after a Klansman in Selma, Alabama, to reach the other side of justice,” he wrote. “Today and every day, we honor that legacy by fighting to protect the right to vote and uphold the integrity of our elections.”

While there have been calls over the years to rename the site, the late Congressman Lewis co-authored an article with Sewell in The Selma Times-Journal in 2015 in favor of keeping the name.

That “is not an endorsement of the man who bares its name but rather an acknowledgment that the name of the bridge today is synonymous with the Voting Rights Movement which changed the face of this nation and the world,” they wrote.

ABC News’ Tesfaye Negussie and Dhanika Pineda contributed to this report.

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