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Sixty-one years after the civil rights marches that demanded full voting rights for Black people in the South, thousands of demonstrators, including Unitarian Universalists, returned to Selma and Montgomery, Alabama, to again confront U.S. democracy’s broken promises.
A national coalition of over ninety groups, including Black Voters Matter, Faith Out Loud, and Woke Vote gathered Saturday at “All Roads Lead to the South,” a march and rally held in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that further hollowed out the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and amid redistricting efforts in Alabama that could eliminate a largely Black congressional district.
About 6,500 people and over 1,000 faith leaders joined the continued fight for fair representation, event organizers said. Black Unitarian Universalist parish ministers from the South were well represented at the rally, according to Side with Love. With just a few days’ notice, Nicole Pressley, Director of Side With Love, the Unitarian Universalist Association’s Organizing Strategy Team, helped organize a group of ministers to participate in faithful action.
“It was incredibly powerful,” Pressley said of the event. “A powerful invitation to remember that even in times when it seemed like every door was closed, when folks were living under Jim Crow and segregation, it has always been people organizing and building power that has been the seed to moving this country towards a multiracial democracy that it has never realized.”
Protesters in Selma marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, a major site in the history of the Civil Rights Movement and the Selma to Montgomery marches, as well as the site of Bloody Sunday. Later, they drove to Montgomery to join the protest outside the state capitol building.
Side With Love Director Nicole Pressley, UUA President Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt, Rev. Latifah Griffin, and Rev. E.N. Hill at Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama.
Walking across the Edmund Pettus bridge, said Pressley, was a potent reminder of the weight of history—and the stakes of the present.
“People fought and died and sacrificed for even what we have today,” said Pressley.
Rev. Jacqueline Brett, Lead Minister of the Eno River UU Fellowship in Durham, North Carolina, said she “couldn’t say no” to the call to Alabama, “because my family and ancestors come from South Carolina, so I remember very clearly the issues my own parents and grandparents had being unable to vote.”
“As a person whose ancestry goes back to the South, it was powerful to be around other Black UU ministers from the South,” Brett said.
Brett emphasized the spiritual and strategic importance of the event in protecting democracy for all people.
“Stopping the Black vote is a precursor to stopping everyone’s vote,” said Brett. “We must view it as a direct attack on democracy.”
Rev. E.N. Hill, associate minister of the UU Congregation of Atlanta, said the rally was “spiritually charged” for them.
“When democracy and voting rights are actively under threat, I think every UU should feel called to respond somehow,” said Hill. “Not everyone is called to march. There are many forms of faithful resistance. But our values do require us to pay attention to redrawn districts, diluted representation, and the erosion of hard-won people power.”
“Selma reminded us that the [Edmund Pettus] bridge is not just a place. It is a practice. And we are called to keep crossing it,” said Hill.
‘We must rise up and say never again’
Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt addressing interfaith clergy at Tabernacle Baptist Church.
The morning of the protest, UUA President Rev. Dr. Sofía Betancourt and UU religious professionals joined an interfaith gathering at the Tabernacle Baptist Church in Selma.
Betancourt offered a prayer on the National Day of Action for Voting Rights.
“We gather on this sacred day in mourning, in outrage, and in deep, prophetic love,” said Betancourt. “We gather in the knowledge that we must rise up and say never again; we will not rest in silence while the dehumanization and disenfranchisement of anti-Black and anti-brown politics run rampant throughout this nation, unchecked.”
Betancourt, whose remarks at Tabernacle Baptist Church were quoted by the New York Times in its coverage of the Selma protest, also released a public statement regarding the rally, naming the “entrenched racism, fear, and violence” that “threatens not only the safety and well-being of Black people, but also the very democratic institutions upon which the U.S. is built.”
Betancourt’s statement also noted that Selma is “a sacred site of resistance” for UUs as “the place where the Rev. James Reeb, Jimmie Lee Jackson, and Viola Liuzzo were killed because of their faithful commitment to equal rights of all people.”
Betancourt and other leaders at the service were explicit in drawing connections between the Civil Rights Movement of the ‘50s and ‘60s and the present-day fight against white supremacy.
“Rev. Reeb and Liuzzo lost their lives in their work responding to [Rev. Dr. Martin Luther] King’s call [to come to Selma],” said Betancourt. “We follow in a path laid by these and many other forebears to offer our own prophetic witness today.”
Regarding the legacy of Reeb, Liuzzo, and other martyrs for the cause of civil rights, Brett said she felt an obligation to help resist current gerrymandering efforts.
“We do what we can and we must,” said Brett. “We will pick up the mantle [of the Civil Rights Movement] and carry that work forward. So, we did what we could this weekend.”
Organizers say “All Roads Lead to the South” was a call for mass action to create “Freedom Summer 2026,” in a nod to the 1964 Mississippi campaign by SNCC and CORE to register Black voters.
Help Protect Democracy with UU the Vote
UU the Vote, the UUA’s strategic initiative to engage voters, has an active events schedule and a toolkit for individuals and congregations to take part in the work of supporting democracy.