From "Bloody Sunday" to Modern Activism: Civil Rights Leaders Reflect on Legacy

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Description: 60 years ago in Selma, Alabama, state troopers beat peaceful protesters bloody on the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they marched for civil rights. The horror of “Bloody Sunday” and the resilience of the Civil Rights Movement ultimately led to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and many of the landmark achievements that are now directly under attack. As civil rights activists look to history to understand — and prepare for — the present, Laura walks the Bridge and talks with, among others, Sheyann Webb Christburg, who marched at the age of eight, Black Voters Matter co-founders LaTosha Brown and Clifford Albright; law professor and author Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw and Maya Wiley, President and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights. What does people power look like today? Plus, a commentary from Laura on name calling then and now.

“We're not going to phone bank our way out of this. We're not going to text our way out of this. And in truth, we're not even going to vote our way out of this . . . It's going to take revisiting some of the same strategies that we saw here in Selma, in terms of nonviolent civil disobedience and direct action.” - Clifford Albright

“When we see and hear and think about fascism, we think about anti-democratic movements in Europe. We think about the Holocaust . . . But for Black people, as Langston Hughes said, you don't have to explain to us what fascism is. We experienced it. That is what we were fighting, for the 60, 70 years after Reconstruction was overthrown.” - Kimberlé Crenshaw

Guests:

• Clifford Albright: Co-Founder & Executive Director, Black Voters Matter

• Willard and Kiba Armstead: Veteran & Spouse

• Trayvon Bossa: Sigma Chapter Member, Miles College Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity

• LaTosha Brown: Co-Founder, Black Voters Matter

• Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw: Co-Founder & Executive Director, African American Policy Forum; Host of the Intersectionality Matters! Podcast

• Noelle Damico: Director of Social Justice, The Workers Circle

• Melinda Hicks: Military Family

• Jaribu Hill: Executive Director & Founder, Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights

• Myla Person: Jack and Jill Club, Columbus, Georgia

• Ann Toback: CEO, The Workers Circle

• Sheyann Webb-Christburg: Youngest Participant,1965 Bloody Sunday March

• Maya Wiley: President & CEO, Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Watch the broadcast episode cut for time at our YouTube channel and airing on PBS stations across the country 

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Music Credit:  "Tremole" "Jagged" "Thrum of Soil" & "Dawn Summit" by Blue Dot Sessions from the album Empty Outpost.  "Steppin" by Podington Bear. And original sound production and design by Jeannie Hopper.

Podcast Endorsement:  Intersectionality Matters! Podcast

Related Laura Flanders Show Episodes:

•  Rep. John Lewis on Making Justice from Selma to the Present, Watch

•  Kimberlé Crenshaw & Soledad O’Brien Call Out the Media on Critical Race Theory, Watch / Listen / Download Podcast

•  Reporting on Policing at the Polls & BIPOC Voter Suppression in 2024, Watch / Listen/Download Podcast:  Full Uncut Conversation and Episode

• Deciding the Fate of Democracy in North Carolina, Watch / Download Podcast 

•  The Georgia Way:  Strategies that Work for Winning Elections, Watch / Listen/Download Podcast:  Full Uncut Conversation and Episode

Related Articles and Resources:

•  Anniversary of ‘Bloody Sunday’ Marks Continued Fight for Voting Rights, by Temi Adeoye, March 24, 2025, ACLU

•  U.S. Civil Rights Trail, Learn More

• United State of Amnesia, The Real History of Critical Race Theory, Hosted by Kimberlé Crenshaw Podcast Mini Series

•  Documentary Trailer:  “Love, Joy, and Power: Tools for Liberation” follows Cliff Albright and LaTosha Brown as they reshape American democracy. As founders of Black Voters Matter Fund, they didn't just flip Georgia in 2020 - they sparked a movement that's still growing. April 8, 2025, Watch

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