• Anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" observed in Selma, Ala.

    By Katie Cannon, Senior Multimedia Editor

    Barack Obama was nearly four years old when "Bloody Sunday" took place.  

    Kevin Glackmeyer / AP

    Congressman John Lewis, center, walks arm in arm with Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), left center Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), right, prior to addressing fellow members of the The Faith & Politics Institute gathered on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., Sunday, March 6, 2011, on the 46th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

    AP

    Alabama state troopers swing nightsticks to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., March 7, 1965. As several hundred marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge to begin a protest march to Montgomery, state troopers assaulted the crowd with clubs and whips.

    AP

    Marchers cross the Alabama river on the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma on March 21, 1965. The civil rights marchers, eight abreast, were led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. This was the start of their five day, 50-mile march to the State Capitol of Montgomery, Ala. They were fighting for voter registration rights for blacks, who were discouraged from registering to vote, particularly in small towns in the south.