The Black Informant | African American Commentary, News and Community Building

SELMA, Ala. – Barbershop owner Floyd Tolbert has marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge each year for nearly four decades in the annual celebration of the bloodied pilgrimage of 1965 that was a milestone in the voting rights movement.

But as some of the original marchers have grown too old to take part and others have died, not enough young people have the passion to take their places, he said.

“Older folks try to keep marching, but the younger people aren’t getting into it,” Tolbert said.

…But some are concerned the event has become too commercial, diluting the meaning of the protest that inspired passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“It’s turned into an event to see the next big rap artist,” said Michelle Pullom, 29. “I have a 12-year-old daughter and whether she wants to go is a question of who’s there.” (more…)

This news should not come as a surprise to much of the “old guard” of the civil rights movement because to this day they still make the claim that nothing has changed since that era. If they want the young people of today to carry these memories, then they must acknowledge the great advancements of black folk and this this nation since this era. Of course by doing so, this will take these never-ending-struggle “preachers” off center stage–something that many of them are not still willing to do.

Until they make room for the next generation to bridge the successes of today to the struggles of the past, our young people will continue to see events like “Bloody Sunday” as irrelevant.