Are Voting Rights Still Under Attack 50 Years After Selma's Bloody Sunday?

"Democracy Now!" airs weekdays at 9 a.m. PT on KCET.

Tens of thousands of people, including President Obama and more than 100 members of Congress, traveled to Selma, Ala. this weekend for the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday. On March 7, 1965, hundreds of peaceful voting rights activists were brutally attacked by Alabama state troopers while crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they attempted to march from Selma to Montgomery.

Bloody Sunday was the first of three attempted marches, finally completed under federal protection and led by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on March 24. The protests helped bring about the 1965 Voting Rights Act. "That's the irony of being here today," says Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund. "We've come to commemorate and lift up and celebrate the activism and the passage of the 1965 Civil Rights Act. But today, the Voting Rights Act is under peril because of the Supreme Court's decision in the Shelby case two years ago."

Ifill outlines how the court ended federal review of changes to voting laws in jurisdictions with a history of abuse, thereby launching a wave of new voting restrictions. She also details efforts by the NAACP-LDF to restore this protection.