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Participants who arrived in Alabama for a civil rights march said they wanted to defend the 1965 Voting Rights Act that has now been gutted. Joseph King with the Gulf States Newsroom reports from Montgomery.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: And we are fired up and ready to go. So when I say fired up, you say ready to go. Fired up.
UNIDENTIFIED CROWD: Ready to go.
JOSEPH KING, BYLINE: Montgomery is not only Alabama's capital. It was also the birthplace of the Civil Rights Movement. In 80-degree weather on Saturday, people held signs and chanted during a national day of action called All Roads Lead to the South. Khayla Doby is an organizer with the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition. She traveled to Alabama because she says there's an attack on majority-Black districts across the country.
KHAYLA DOBY: We know that when elected officials try to attack our district maps and try to pick their voters instead of letting the people choose who represent us, that that impacts the future that we will all inherit.
KING: Saturday started with prayer at Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma - a place where activists first met in 1963 to organize the Civil Rights Movement. From there, people marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge - another important symbol of the civil rights struggle. Then they packed up and headed towards Montgomery. Saturday's rally was organized by over 200 groups in response to the recent Louisiana v. Callais decision by the Supreme Court that allows legislators to redraw congressional maps without considering the race of its voters. Out of the seven Alabama districts, five are represented by white men. The other two have Black congresspeople. Doby, who is 28, says part of her mission is to encourage young people to join the fight for voter protection.
DOBY: If our votes didn't matter, they wouldn't be coming for them. So that's why we're here today, and that's why we're fighting back in Georgia as well.
KING: In Montgomery, New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says the next generation of leaders are needed.
ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ: You shouldn't wait for instruction, but you should just go out there and organize. You are leaders in your own right.
KING: Alabama will have a special election in August. States - including South Carolina, Mississippi and Georgia - recently joined a list of other states considering redrawing their voting maps.
For NPR News, I'm Joseph King. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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