TERRI SEWELL

President Joe Biden is using the searing memories of 1965's “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama, to recommit to securing voting rights.

During a deadly storm system that spawned tornadoes across parts of the U.S. South, Zakiya Sankara-Jabar’s cellphone buzzed relentlessly.

Congressional districts that a federal court panel said were unconstitutional because they dilute representation for Black voters in Alabama are nevertheless being used for the November election after the U.S. Supreme Court allowed them.

Two U.S. veterans from Alabama who were in Ukraine assisting in the war against Russia haven’t been heard from in days and are missing.

The world knows the city of Selma, Alabama, as a historic beacon in the struggle for voting rights.

Growing up in the civil rights epicenter of Selma, Alabama, Terri Sewell heard all the stories about the voting rights battles.

The Supreme Court’s decision to halt efforts to create a second mostly Black congressional district in Alabama for the 2022 election has sparked fresh warnings that the court is eroding the Voting Rights Act and reviving the need for Congress to intervene.

The sweeping elections bill that has collapsed in the Senate dealt with much more than voting changes.

In the nation’s capital on Saturday, multiracial coalitions of civil, human and labor rights leaders are convening rallies and marches to urge passage of federal voter protections that have been eroded since the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

House Democrats are offering a new proposal to update the landmark Voting Rights Act.

A banner encouraging workers to vote in labor balloting is shown at an Amazon warehouse in Bessemer, Ala., on Tuesday, March 30, 2021. The two sides are fully aware that it's not just the Bessemer warehouse on the line. The only other time Amazon came up against a union vote was in 2014, when the majority of the 30 workers at a Delaware warehouse turned it down. AdThe auto workers union has had some of the largest union pushes of the last decade, but their most intense and publicized efforts ended in failure. The RWDSU estimates that more than 80% of the warehouse workers in Bessemer are Black.

Over decades, many white workers have drifted toward Republicans, attracted in part by cultural identity and an anti-establishment posture. Even without that law, labor leaders say the Amazon result could be a springboard for labor organizing nationwide. Merritt, an expert on Southern labor politics, drew a straight line from the pre-Civil War economy to the current climate. Before slavery’s abolition, she said, white workers were threatened -- explicitly or implicitly -- with being replaced by slaves, stripping them of any leverage with employers. Eventually, northern industrialists entered Southern markets, joining white Southern land barons to take advantage of cheap labor in industries including textiles, steel and mining.

FILE - In this Thursday, Feb. 14, 2019 file photo, People stand in the lobby for Amazon offices in New York. Some Democratic members of Congress and national union leaders have gathered, seeking to build support for unionizing a massive Amazon facility outside Birmingham, Alabama. Mail voting by about 6,000 workers at the distribution facility began in February 2021 and concludes at the end of March. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan, File)BESSEMER, Ala. – Some Democratic members of Congress and national union leaders on Friday sought to rustle up support for unionizing a massive Amazon facility outside Birmingham, comparing Alabama workers’ organizing campaign to the civil rights movement. At the Alabama facility, a majority of the 6,000 workers would have to vote “yes” to organize the facility.

In this image from video, people from across the U.S. sing the National Anthem during the first night of the Democratic National Convention on Monday, Aug. 17, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)LAS VEGAS The pageantry often associated with presidential conventions will be remade again as Democrats gather virtually for a second day. The roll call vote of state delegations, which typically unfolds over several hours of fanfare, will instead be abbreviated Tuesday. BUT FIRST, BILLA speech from Bill Clinton is among the traditions that Democrats are including in Tuesday nights programming. The roll call will go alphabetically through the 57 states, territories and the Democrats Abroad delegation, meaning Alabama will lead off.

(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)WASHINGTON Mourning the death of civil rights hero John Lewis, Democrats are urging the Senate to take up a bill of enduring importance to Lewis throughout his life: protecting and expanding the right to vote. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called Lewis a great man who helped bend the nations history toward justice, but Republicans appear unlikely to bring up the voting rights bill for a Senate vote. Lewis, a Democrat who served 17 terms in the House, was for decades a force behind civil rights and voting rights laws. But it has become a contentious issue, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court decision declaring a key section of the Voting Rights Act unconstitutional. Lewis, who was bloodied and bludgeoned in a civil rights march months before the original voting rights law was passed, presided in the House chamber as lawmakers voted to extend it.

Some residents in the landmark civil rights city of Selma, Ala., are among the critics of a bid to rename the historic bridge where voting rights marchers were beaten in 1965. Just 25 years later, the bridge became a global landmark when civil rights marchers were beaten at its base. Still others fear a change would hurt tourism in a poor town with little going for it other than its civil rights history. I followed him up on that Edmund Pettus Bridge. What happened on that bridge changed the whole meaning of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, of Edmund Pettus to me, Bland said.