And with effort, we can protect the foundation stone of our democracy for which so many marched across this bridge – and that is the right to vote.  Right now, in 2015, fifty years after Selma, there are laws across this country designed to make it harder for people to vote.  As we speak, more of such laws are being proposed.  Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Act, the culmination of so much blood and sweat and tears, the product of so much sacrifice in the face of wanton violence, stands weakened, its future subject to partisan rancor.

How can that be?  The Voting Rights Act was one of the crowning achievements of our democracy, the result of Republican and Democratic effort.  President Reagan signed its renewal when he was in office.  President Bush signed its renewal when he was in office.  One hundred Members of Congress have come here today to honor people who were willing to die for the right it protects.  If we want to honor this day, let these hundred go back to Washington, and gather four hundred more, and together, pledge to make it their mission to restore the law this year.

Of course, our democracy is not the task of Congress alone, or the courts alone, or the President alone.  If every new voter suppression law was struck down today, we’d still have one of the lowest voting rates among free peoples.  Fifty years ago, registering to vote here in Selma and much of the South meant guessing the number of jellybeans in a jar or bubbles on a bar of soap.  It meant risking your dignity, and sometimes, your life.  What is our excuse today for not voting?  How do we so casually discard the right for which so many fought?  How do we so fully give away our power, our voice, in shaping America’s future?

—President Barack Obama, in his speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma.  This was one of Obama’s strongest speeches and worth reading or hearing in its entirety.