Obama in Selma: America’s racial past ‘still casts its long shadow’

Commemorating the 50th anniversary of the bloody civil-rights march in Selma, Alabama, President Obama said Saturday that America’s history of racial conflict “still casts its long shadow” and he called on Congress to strengthen voting-rights laws for minorities.

Speaking to a crowd of about 40,000 at the Edmund Pettus bridge where marchers were attacked by state troopers in 1965, Mr. Obama said it’s a “common mistake” for Americans to believe that “racism is banished.” He pointed to this week’s Justice Department report that found widespread patterns of racial bias in the Ferguson, Missouri, police department.

“We just