March 10, 2025
Yesterday the National Hispanic Media Coalition traveled to commemorate the 60th Anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Alabama.
In March of 1965, nearly 600 African-American demonstrators crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge as a first leg of what would have been a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama to protest the murder of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was shot and killed by an Alabama state trooper while trying to shield his mother from ongoing beatings by the state troopers as punishment for exercising their right to protest. The demonstrators were met on the Bridge by more than 50 state troopers, horses, and possemen. When they refused to turn back, they were brutally beaten, gassed, and whipped.
The attack, which was broadcast on national television, caught the attention of millions of Americans and became a symbol of the brutal racism of the South. Two weeks later, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr and 3,200 civil rights protestors marched the 49 miles from Selma to Montgomery – an event that prompted Congress to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Sixty years later, today, we still face similar challenges. This is why, in January 2025, NHMC joined the Demand Diversity Roundtable, a coalition of over 20 of the nation’s civil and human rights organizations representing more than 100 million Americans.
Together, NHMC has and continues to join the Roundtable to meet with bipartisan and bicameral congressional leaders on Capitol Hill.
NHMC will keep marching forward, unified alongside other civil and human rights leaders and organizations to safeguard our communities and our democracy.
Yours in the Movement,
Brenda Victoria Castillo
President & CEO
National Hispanic Media Coalition
