US civil rights march to Washington sets out from historic Selma

The NAACP is launching a forty-day march throughout the D.R. South on Saturday with a rally in Selma, Alabama, aiming to draw on that metropolis’s significance in the Nineteen Sixties civil rights motion to name consideration to the difficulty of racial injustice in trendy America.

The activists set out on Sunday from Selma, Alabama – the scene of a violent crackdown on voting rights demonstrators 50 years in the past.

Activists say a 2013 Supreme Court decision has allowed some states to reverse some provisions of the Act.

More than 200 supporters took part in the first leg of the march that will continue for more than 1,300km through the states of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia.

To mark the start of the so-called “America’s Journey for Justice” Reverend Theresa Dear told the Montgomery Advertiser newspaper, “We are doing something of biblical proportions”.

After starting at the historic Edmund Pettus Bridge, the “40-day-and-40-night” march is to end September 15.

According to the outcry triggered by the recent police killings that included the Ferguson shooting of a black teenager, this situation requires to be channeled into a long-term commitment for bringing changes to the nation.

President Barack Obama has visited Selma for paying tribute to the original marchers in March calling them “heroes” and has said that they had “given courage to millions”.

Despite progress, he said, the fight against racism was not over.

“America’s Journey for Justice will unite partners from the social justice, youth activism, civil rights, democracy reform, religious, not-for-profit, labor, corporate, and environmental communities to call for justice for all Americans under the unifying theme “Our Lives, Our Votes, Our Jobs, Our Schools Matter”. “We know the march is not yet over, the race is not yet won”. They reportedly included at least two women.