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SELMA, Ala. — <\/span>Sixty-one years after state troopers attacked Civil Rights marchers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, thousands are gathering in the Alabama city this weekend, amid new concerns about the future of the Voting Rights Act<\/a>.<\/p>\n The March 7, 1965, violence that became known as Bloody Sunday<\/a> shocked the nation and helped spur passage of the landmark legislation that dismantled barriers to voting for Black Americans in the Jim Crow South.<\/p>\n But this year\u2019s anniversary celebrations \u2014 events run all weekend and end with a commemorative march across the bridge Sunday \u2014 come as the U.S. Supreme Court considers a case<\/a> that could limit a provision of the Voting Rights Act<\/a> that has helped ensure some congressional and local districts are drawn so minority voters have a chance to elect their candidate of choice.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m concerned that all of the advances that we made for the last 61 years are going to be eradicated,\u201d said Charles Mauldin, 78, one of the marchers who was beaten that day.<\/p>\n Justices are expected to rule soon on a Louisiana case regarding the role of race in drawing congressional districts. A ruling prohibiting or limiting that role could have sweeping consequences, potentially opening the door for Republican-controlled states to redistrict and roll back majority Black and Latino districts that tend to favor Democrats.<\/p>\n Democratic officeholders, civil rights leaders and others have descended on the southern city to pay homage to the pivotal moment of the Civil Rights Movement and to issue calls to action. Like the marchers on Bloody Sunday<\/a>, they must keep pressing forward, organizers said. <\/p>\n Former state Sen. Hank Sanders, who helped start the annual commemoration, said the 1965 events in Selma marked a turning point in the nation and helped push the United States closer to becoming a true democracy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe feeling is a profound fear that we will be taken back \u2014 a greater fear than at any time since 1965,\u201d Sanders said.<\/p>\n U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures won election in 2024 to an Alabama district that was redrawn by the federal court. He said what happened in Selma and the subsequent passage of the Voting Rights Act \u201cwas monumental in shaping what America looks like and how America is represented in Congress.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI think coming to Selma is a refreshing reminder every single year that the progress that we got from the Civil Rights Movement is not perpetual. It\u2019s been under consistent attacks almost since we\u2019ve gotten those rights,\u201d Figures said. <\/p>\n In 1965, the Bloody Sunday marchers led by John Lewis and Hosea Williams walked in pairs across the Selma bridge headed toward Montgomery. Mauldin, then 17, was part of the third pair behind Williams and Lewis.<\/p>\n At the apex of the bridge, they could see the sea of law enforcement officers, including some on horseback, waiting for them. But they kept going. \u201cBeing fearful was not an option. And it wasn\u2019t that we didn\u2019t have fear, it\u2019s that we chose courage over fear,\u201d Mauldin recalled in a telephone interview.<\/p>\n \u201cWe were all hit. We were trampled. We were tear-gassed. And we were brutalized by the state of Alabama,\u201d Mauldin said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n