Sixty-one years ago, on March 7, 1965, 600 people stepped onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. They marched for the simple promise of democracy: the right to vote. What met them was not dialogue but violence — billy clubs, tear gas, mounted troopers. “Bloody Sunday” forced the nation to confront two truths: the brutality of racial discrimination and the power of coordinated Black organizing.
Selma was not only about ballots. It was about state power — and who it protects.
The marchers were protesting not just voter suppression, but the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, a 26-year-old Black man shot by an Alabama state trooper while protecting his mother during a peaceful protest. His death exposed what Black communities already knew: when democracy threatens entrenched power, the state responds with force.
Today, we are again watching the machinery of state violence turn toward Black and Brown communities.
In Minneapolis this year, heavily armed federal agents carried out aggressive immigration raids, detaining residents and arresting protesters. For many, the images felt hauntingly familiar. This is the same city where, nearly six years ago, the murder of George Floyd sparked one of the largest racial justice uprisings in modern U.S. history. But Minneapolis is not an exception — it is part of a pattern.
Before George Floyd, there was Eric Garner, killed by police in New York City for allegedly selling loose cigarettes. His final words — “I can’t breathe” — echoed across the Brooklyn Bridge, where thousands marched demanding accountability. In 2015, when Freddie Gray died from injuries sustained in Baltimore police custody, protests erupted nationwide. The response? Five hundred state troopers and the Maryland National Guard deployed against largely young Black demonstrators.
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