Joe Biden's Claims Voting Rights' Under Assault' in His Selma Speech on 'Bloody Sunday' Anniv

By BERT HOOVER First Posted: Mar 06, 2023 04:54 AM EST

During his Selma speech on Sunday to mark the 58th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday," when state police attacked peaceful protestors marching against segregation, President Joe Biden pushed for the passage of laws to strengthen American voting rights.

This trip is the latest effort by Biden to demonstrate his dedication to the black community, which played a significant role in getting him elected and will likely play a similar one in his re-election quest in 2024.

It arrived at the same time his efforts to pass voting rights legislation through Congress hit a wall, Reuters noted.

"Selma is a reckoning. The right to vote and to have your vote counted is the threshold of democracy and liberty," Biden stated in front of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the site of violent clashes between protesters and state troopers in the 1965 voting-rights demonstrations.

"With it, anything's possible. Without it, without that right, nothing is possible. And this fundamental right remains under assault."

The President ended his speech by marching across the bridge with civil rights leaders Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and administration officials.

Joe Biden Uses Selma Visit to Speak with Civil Right Activists

Joe Biden used his time in Selma as an opportunity to address the new generation of civil rights workers.

Many people are frustrated by how slowly voting rights reform has moved, so they hope his administration will continue highlighting the issue.

In his opening remarks, Biden emphasized the significance of remembering Bloody Sunday to prevent history from being lost, according to CBS News.

"We can't just choose to learn what we want to know, and not what we should know," Biden said during his speech on Sunday, seeming to take a shot at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and the issue regarding AP African American History.

He also said that we must know the good, the terrible, and the truth about ourselves as a nation. In addition, everyone has to know the real story of Selma.

There have been few events in the history of the civil rights struggle that have had such a lasting impact as the events of March 7, 1965, and the weeks that followed in Selma.

Several weeks after an Alabama policeman fatally shot a young Black man, Jimmie Lee Jackson Lewis, and fellow activist Hosea Williams led about 600 nonviolent protests.

As part of a larger effort to register African American voters in the South, Alabama troopers and sheriff's deputies brutally beat Lewis and the others as they sought to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge at the beginning of a 54-mile trek to the state Capitol in Montgomery.

"On this bridge, blood was given to help redeem the soul of America," Biden said.

Joe Biden Said He Was a Civil Right Activist During Selma Speech

In his Selma speech, President Joe Biden made an unsupported claim that he participated in the civil rights movement.

The President visited the ancient city to remember the 58th anniversary of the "Bloody Sunday" march, a watershed event in the civil rights struggle of the 1960s.

"I was a student up north in the civil rights movement," Biden said to the crowd.

"I remember feeling how guilty I was, [that] I wasn't here. How could we all be up there, and you go through what you went through," he continued.

Yet, Biden's assertion is not backed by any evidence from the past. It was not the first time Biden had made such a claim since he did so in a previous address on Sunday, Fox News.

Biden stated that he took part in desegregation sit-in protests in 1983.

"When I was 17, I participated in sit-ins to desegregate restaurants and movie houses," Biden said, adding that hearing Faubus's and Wallace's voices made him sick to his stomach and seeing Bull Connor and his dogs enraged his soul.

Joe Biden also suggested that he was detained in January because of his activism for civil rights. Two prestigious black universities, Morehouse and Clark Atlanta, share the campus where he gave a speech.