By Associated Press // Civil Rights // EEW Magazine Online

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is traveling to Alabama this weekend to commemorate a key moment of the civil rights movement.

Harris will speak in Selma at an event marking the 57th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” the day in 1965 when white police attacked Black voting rights marchers.

Harris will also take part in the annual event’s symbolic march across the bridge. Several other members of President Joe Biden’s administration will also attend the event, including Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Marcia Fudge, Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan.

On March 7, 1965, Alabama state troopers beat and tear-gassed hundreds of demonstrators. The confrontation set the stage weeks later for the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to lead the massive Selma-to-Montgomery march for voting rights.

The events galvanized support for the passage of the Voting Rights Act later that year.

Harris is the first female U.S. vice president and the first Black woman and person of South Asian descent in the role.