Biden marches with US civil rights leaders in Alabama
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Vice President Joe Biden, center, leads a group across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 3, 2013. They were commemorating the 48th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when police officers beat marchers when they crossed the bridge on a march from Selma to Montgomery. From left: Selma Mayor George Evans, U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, D-Ala., Rev. Jesse Jackson, Biden, Rev. Al Sharpton and U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga. -- PHOTO: AP
WASHINGTON (AFP) - Vice-President Joe Biden marched with black civil rights leaders on Sunday in Selma, Alabama to commemorate the "Bloody Sunday" beating of voting rights marchers 48 years ago.
State police assaulted the original marchers in 1965 over the protest urging Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act that struck down rules that barred African Americans from voting, and ended white majority rule in the US South.
The vice-president said his consciousness was shaped by television footage of the beatings by state troopers.
"We saw in stark relief the rank hatred, discrimination and violence that still existed in large parts of the nation," he said at the event highlighting the area's importance during the US civil rights era.
