Selma

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Alabama Reports Tornado Deaths
Alabama Reports
Tornado Deaths

Alabama Reports Tornado Deaths

Two young children are found on a Selma rooftop after twister passes

(Newser) - A giant, swirling storm system billowing across the South spurred a tornado on Thursday that killed at least six people in central Alabama. Details about the fatalities were not immediately available. The storm shredded the walls of homes, toppled roofs, and uprooted trees in Selma. Brick buildings collapsed, cars were...

Body of Civil Rights Icon Crosses Historic Bridge

A procession accompanies the body of Rep. John Lewis across the Edmund Pettus Bridge

(Newser) - The late US Rep. John Lewis crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, for the final time Sunday as remembrances continue for the civil rights icon, the AP reports. A crowd began gathering near the bridge that became a landmark in the fight for racial justice when Lewis and...

Selma Churchgoers Turn Their Backs on Bloomberg

He failed to address stop-and-frisk policy in speech at historic black church

(Newser) - They haven't forgotten "Bloody Sunday" in Selma, Alabama—and they haven't forgotten Michael Bloomberg's policies as mayor of New York, either. At a service in a Selma church Sunday to commemorate the bloody 1965 crackdown on civil rights marchers, some parishioners turned their backs on Bloomberg...

NPR Gets Assailant in 1965 Selma Attack to Admit Role

William Portwood admits taking part in assault that left minister James Reeb dead

(Newser) - An eyewitness to an unsolved 1965 murder that galvanized the civil rights movement admits she lied on the witness stand and to the FBI about the killing of Boston minister James Reeb in Selma, Ala. At the time, Frances Bowden said she could not identify the assailants. But as part...

Thousands Jam 'Bloody Sunday' Bridge

Huge crowd marks 50th anniversary

(Newser) - Thousands of people crowded an Alabama bridge on Sunday, many jammed shoulder to shoulder and unable to move, to commemorate a bloody confrontation 50 years ago between police and peaceful protesters that helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. A day after President Obama walked atop the Edmund Pettus...

Ku Klux Klan Sends Message to Selma

Fliers coincide with 50th anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday'

(Newser) - Civil rights supporters aren't the only ones making waves in Alabama—the Ku Klux Klan showed up, too, distributing fliers around Selma and Montgomery over the past two weeks, AL.com reports. The Loyal White Knights of the KKK's grand dragon, Robert Jones, says roughly 4,000 fliers...

Obama in Selma: Race 'Casts Its Long Shadow'
Obama in Selma: Race
'Casts Its Long Shadow' 
updated

Obama in Selma: Race 'Casts Its Long Shadow'

President speaks to thousands, 50 years after 'Bloody Sunday'

(Newser) - America's racial history "still casts its long shadow upon us," the nation's first black president said today as he stood in solidarity and remembrance with civil rights activists whose beatings by police a half-century ago galvanized people against racial oppression and hastened passage of historic voting...

Petition: Selma Bridge Shouldn't Honor KKK Leader

Student group says Edmund Pettus Bridge must be renamed

(Newser) - The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., occupies a huge place in civil rights history—site of the "Bloody Sunday" beatings 50 years ago as protesters walked to Montgomery. Now a student group is calling attention to a less-well-known fact about the bridge: It's named for a man...

8 Stories