With a nod to ongoing US racial tension and threats to voting rights, President Barack Obama declared the work of the Civil Rights Movement advanced but unfinished on Saturday during a visit to the Alabama bridge that spawned a landmark voting law.
Obama, the first black US president, said discrimination by law enforcement officers in Ferguson, Missouri, showed a lot of work needed to be done on race in America, but he warned it was wrong to suggest that progress had not been made.
"50 years from Bloody Sunday, our march is not yet finished, but we're getting closer," Obama said, standing near the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where police and state troopers beat and fired tear gas at peaceful marchers who were advocating against racial discrimination at the voting booth.
"The Americans who crossed this bridge, they were not physically imposing, but they gave courage to millions. They held no elected office, but they led a nation," Obama said.
After his remarks, Obama and his wife Michelle, daughters Malia and Sasha, and mother-in-law Marian Robinson joined some of the original marchers along with former President George W Bush and his wife, Laura, to walk across the bridge.
The anniversary comes at a time of renewed focus on racial disparities in the United States, including discrimination from police against black citizens nationwide.
On Saturday, he criticised efforts to limit voting rights that have sparked a clash between Republicans and Democrats across the country.
Rev Raphael Warnock, the 45-year-old pastor of the Atlanta church led by King at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, lamented that the measure was now in limbo.
Others reflected on how much had changed since the violence of a bygone era.
"Fifty years ago if we were standing here we would be surprised if a police officer did not beat us," said Dick Gregory, 83, who was on the bridge 50 years before.
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