by TChris

Commemorating the "Bloody Sunday" demonstration for voting rights 40 years ago, politicians and civil rights supporters crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge again today.

Nearly 40 members of Congress, led by [Rep. John] Lewis, linked arms and sang spirituals and protest songs as they marched from Brown Chapel AME Church through downtown Selma and across the bridge, following the route that Lewis, as chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and more than 500 others walked on March 7, 1965.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson worries that Congress will water down the Voting Rights Act when it comes up for reauthorization in 2007.

That act, passed in the wake of the "Bloody Sunday" march, abolished Jim Crow obstacles that kept black people from the polls, such as literacy tests and poll taxes. The act required specific states, mainly in the South, to submit their electoral processes to federal supervision.

Criticizing Bush directly, Jackson said the president told members of the Congressional Black Caucus, including Jackson's son, Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Ill.), that he was not familiar with the act. President Bush was once governor of Texas, one of the states covered by the act. "How can you be fighting for democracy and be unclear" on what the Voting Rights Act says? Jackson asked.