The annual Bridge Crossing Jubilee in Selma, Alabama, honors the events of “Bloody Sunday,” which took place on March 7, 1965. On that day, approximately 525 African-American protesters gathered at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church to demand voting rights. They marched six blocks to Broad Street and crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where they were confronted by over 50 state troopers and several dozen posse members on horseback. When the protesters refused to turn back, they were violently attacked, with at least 17 people hospitalized and 40 others treated for injuries and tear gas exposure. The brutal assault, broadcast nationwide, shocked the American public and became a symbol of the severe racism in the South. Just two weeks later, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and 3,200 civil rights supporters completed the 49-mile march from Selma to Montgomery, which led to the passing of the Voting Rights Act. Every year, during the first weekend of March, the Bridge Crossing Jubilee commemorates both the violent clash at the Pettus Bridge and the subsequent march to Montgomery. The celebration includes a parade, a Miss Jubilee Pageant, a mock trial, and a commemorative march to the bridge. Every five years, participants extend the march all the way to Montgomery.