Wes Moore reflects as he pays tribute to Jesse Jackson, visits Selma for Bloody Sunday anniversary: ‘We can’t stop fighting’
TheGrio...
“We were built for moments like these,” the Maryland governor tells theGrio, as advocates fret about modern-day threats to equal access to the ballot.
As Rev. Jesse Jackson is laid to rest in Chicago and thousands gather in Alabama this weekend to commemorate the anniversary of the 1965 Selma to Montgomery marches, also known as Bloody Sunday, Governor Wes Moore is holding on to optimism, even as the state of civil rights for Black Americans is seeing rollbacks or points of contention.
“I think that they are serving as motivation as to why we can’t stop fighting,” Moore told theGrio during a recent phone interview a day before he traveled to Chicago to pay tribute to Rev. Jackson at his funeral service, which summoned three living United States presidents (Bill Clinton, Barack Obama and Joe Biden), a former U.S. vice president (Kamala Harris), and Secretary of State (Hillary Clinton).
As America’s only Black governor and only the third elected in U.S. history, Moore said of Jackson, “I know that my path is not possible without him.”
“There are many shoulders that I know I can see higher because I’m standing on their shoulders…amongst the broadest is Reverend Jesse Jackson,” the Maryland governor said of the Rainbow PUSH Coalition founder and 1984 and 1988 presidential candidate.
Rev. Jackson, he said, believed America politically needed to be held to a “higher height.” It was something “revolutionary,” Moore explained. “It was something that was unusual, but so many campaigns that came after his, to include mine…started to become real because the people of this country started to imagine that they could be real.”
Moore himself remains a rumored contender for the presidency in 2028, though he consistently insists, “I’m not running.” Instead, the governor is focused on re-election this November.
This weekend, Moore will join several leaders in Selma for the annual festivities honoring Bloody Sunday, where on March 7, 1965, civil rights leaders John Lewis, Hosea Williams, and hundreds of other demonstrators were brutally beaten by police officers as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to protest the injustices Black Americans faced in not being able to exercise their right to vote.
“They didn’t do it because they thought it would be an easy victory. They did it because it was just,” said Moore, who, in addition to the commemorative walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, will deliver the keynote address at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund Annual Jubilee on Saturday.
While the brutality of that historical day ultimately led to the passing of the landmark Voting Rights Act later that year, today, many are grappling with modern-day actions that advocates and leaders say will turn back the clock on equal access to voting rights.
Congress is currently contemplating the Republican-led SAVE America Act, which would require voter ID and documentation of citizenship in order to vote. Experts and critics say that, if passed, the legislation would suppress access to the ballot for millions of Black Americans, and others, including working and low-income people and married women who change their last names, who do not have documents like passports or birth certificates, or are too financially burdened to obtain one.
Additionally, the U.S. Supreme Court is weighing a case that could result in the striking down of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, thereby completely gutting the landmark law. And most recently, President Donald Trump ordered his FBI to seize the 2020 election ballots in Fulton County, Georgia, in an apparent attempt to bolster his conspiracy lies that the year’s presidential election was rigged against him.
Given the perceived assaults on voting rights, it could feel like the progress achieved more than 60 years ago was all for naught. However, Governor Moore tells theGrio that now is the time to draw from the strength and fearlessness of the 1960s freedom fighters.
“We were built for moments like these,” he said. “The history of this country has never been even, and the promise of this country has never been promised. It takes fighters, and it took people who were willing to stand on principle, stand on values, and stand on strength to be able to ensure that we can actually one day be the country that we hoped to be.”
Moore rebuked the Trump administration for its actions that many see as undermining the civil rights infrastructure that so many organized, protested, and died to assemble.
“The administration is trying to remind us about how tough they are. I think that people have to remind the administration about how tough we are,” he told theGrio. “We know that the assault is real. It’s this creative and aggressive assault…we know what it looks like, because we’ve seen it before.”
Drawing on the grit and fearlessness of leaders like Rev. Jackson, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., John Lewis, and countless others, the Maryland governor said, “Freedoms aren’t things that are just given to you. They’re treasures that, if you’re lucky, you were born into them, but then while you’re here, it’s your collective responsibility to protect them for whoever is coming next.”
He added, “We cannot be lazy or blindsided when it comes to our protection of a lot of basic freedoms that, in many cases, we take for granted.”