In Alabama, thousands of people joined a rally at the state Capitol in Montgomery on Saturday, demanding an end to racist gerrymandering by Republican state legislatures in Southern states targeting Black voters. The National Day of Action came in response to the Supreme Court’s April ruling which gutted Voting Rights Act protections for majority-Black districts. Saturday’s protests began in Selma with a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named after the former Confederate officer and Ku Klux Klan leader, which was the site of the historic 1965 voting rights march that became known as Bloody Sunday. This is Laketa Smith, an organizer who traveled from New Orleans to join Saturday’s march.

Laketa Smith: “Selma has a special place in my heart. I’m a Southern girl, and I believe that suppression of voting rights is what’s happening across the South and the United States. It requires all hands on deck.”