Return to Selma with the Workers Circle
In 1965, Workers Circle leaders stood on the frontlines of history, marching shoulder-to-shoulder with John Lewis, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., and Amelia Boynton from Selma to Montgomery to demand voting rights and to an end to Jim Crow.
Now, as we approach the 60th anniversary of the Selma Bridge Crossing, we invite you to return to Selma and honor this legacy with us from March 6–10, 2025.
Take the first step in joining the Workers Circle delegation and be part of this historic commemoration by filling out the interest form.
College Network Delegation
If you are a college student or young adult, apply for our young adult immersion. You’ll learn history, current challenges, and organizing skills. You’ll visit the Equal Justice Institute and experience the Selma Jubilee programming as well. Together, we’ll march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. All travel, food, lodging, and programmatic expenses are covered by the Workers Circle. We’re holding our immersion in partnership with the League of Women Voters Young Voter Power Cohort. Apply to be part of the Workers Circle College Network Delegation.
Sunday – Bridge Crossing Only
All are invited to join the Workers Circle’s delegation on Sunday, March 9 in Selma for the afternoon Rally and Bridge Crossing. Sign up to receive more information.
We invite adult members to join us in Selma for an immersive Civil Rights weekend experience. Scholars in residence will help us reflect and contextualize Jewish organizing and Black organizing traditions and solidarity in the ongoing fight for a truly multiracial American democracy. You’ll have the opportunity to participate in the Selma Jubilee programs offered by Selma leaders, civil rights, and democracy organizations and of course the Bridge Crossing. Sign up to let us know you’re interested. Program costs and lodging costs will be shared soon.
General Delegation
The HistorY
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As they crossed the bridge, state police were waiting on horseback and on foot, dressed in riot gear. At the foot of the bridge were the press, filming as the marchers paused to pray and were met with violence force as AL State police beat them with bullwhips and batons wrapped in barbed wire, charged with horses, and tear gassed them, barely escaping with their lives. National television news broadcast the brutal attack and it pricked the conscience of the nation.
Dr. King, who watched what came to be known as “Bloody Sunday” from Atlanta, then put out a call for leaders of faith and conscience to come to Selma the following week and continue that march. Among them were Irving Gordon, an optician who served as Chairman of the Atlanta Workers Circle and the entire Southern Region of the Workers Circle, as well as Workers Circle members and youth joined the march from Selma to Montgomery.
These actions in Selma crystallized the countless acts of courage, nonviolence, and sacrifice by civil rights activists across the country, and propelled the Johnson Administration to craft and the Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965 in August of that year.
On March 7, 1965 John Lewis, Hosea Williams, Amelia Boynton, and civil rights activists from the Selma region amassed at Brown Memorial Chapel, marched through Selma and across the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Marchers were protesting the police killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who died protecting his mother as police attacked a peaceful civil rights march in nearby Marion, AL in late February. Civil rights activists determined they’d march from Selma to Montgomery to bring their demands to the Alabama state capitol.