50th Anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a turning point in American History - Historian Dr. Gary May is available for interview

Saturday March 7 marks the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, a turning point in American history.

The brutal attack on voting rights activists on the Edmund Pettus Bridge 50 years ago shocked the nation and forced President Lyndon B. Johnson to put a voting rights bill at the top of his legislative agenda.

On March 15, he addressed the nation, telling the American people bluntly that “It is wrong—deadly wrong—to deny any of your fellow Americans the right to vote … There must be no delay, or no hesitation, or no compromise … It’s not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice.”

Then he paused, and slowly and distinctly, Johnson uttered the words never before spoken by an American president: “And-we-shall-overcome.”

Two days later, the bill was delivered to the House. In early August, it passed both houses of Congress by overwhelming margins and, on August 6, the president signed it into law. For the first time since Reconstruction, African Americans in the South were free to vote like all Americans.

Among those commemorating Bloody Sunday on March 7 will be President Barack Obama and former President Bill Clinton.

Expert Gary May is a professor of history at the University of Delaware and the author of Bending Toward Justice: The Voting Rights Act and the Transformation of American Democracy. He is available for interview to discuss the historic events 50 years ago this week and what they mean today.

http://www.history.udel.edu/garymay/fac-bio/gary-may/