Eyewitness to History: Commemorating Selma's "Bloody Sunday"

CWA District 6 Vice President Claude Cummings and Ruth, his wife of 43 years, were among the more than 70,000 people who marked the 50th anniversary of the famous "Bloody Sunday" march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, last weekend.

CWA District 6 Vice President Claude Cummings and his wife Ruth marked the 50th anniversary of the famous "Bloody Sunday" march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, last weekend.

"It was moving, quite an experience," Cummings said of the epochal civil rights event that led to the passage of legislation including the Voting Rights Act and other critical civil rights laws. "I couldn't help but think about how far we've come and also how far we have to go because there are so many of our rights that we won in that struggle that are now being taken away."

Cummings said it was especially gratifying to be there to hear President Barack Obama, the first African American President of the United States, speak on voting rights.

"More than anything else, it re-energizes me to do more, to make sure that our rights are protected. We need to go back to the communities and do more to make sure that people are registered to vote. We cannot allow our voting rights to be taken away. People endured trauma and beatings, they were tear-gassed and jailed. We cannot let them down by sitting out elections," Cummings said.

Cummings said CWA will work with the NAACP to organize a "Journey for Justice" trip from Selma to Washington later in the summer to focus on voting rights, workers' rights, civil rights, human rights, and the rights of everyone in our communities. The journey will include stops for events in cities along the way, he said.

Ruth Cummings has personal connections to the events that took place in Selma 50 years ago.

Her home then, where her brother Chester still lives, was one mile east of where the Edmund Pettus Bridge crosses the Alabama River. As one of the few homes with telephones in town, they hosted members of the media who came to call in their stories.

Mrs. Cummings says she was 13 on "Bloody Sunday" and was forbidden by her father to go anywhere near the bridge. Her brother, Hosea Purifoy, was 17 when he marched and was tear-gassed on "Bloody Sunday."