Former governor Deval Patrick and University of Massachusetts Boston students met in Selma, Alabama at the Tabernacle Baptist Church on Sunday, March 8 at the commemoration of the 50-year anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” march for civil rights.
“I am so touched to see so many people from Massachusetts,” began Governor Patrick, in his address to the Tabernacle congregation. “The quest for civil rights started with young people like you who put aside their fear, laid out their shackles, and shaped their own future,” said Governor Patrick. They were fighting for something bigger than themselves.  
Governor Patrick also addressed the issues of wealth inequalities in America, the need to reform the justice system, and mass incarceration of black people in the United States. “Today, there are more black people in prison than there [were] black people in slavery,” he said.
He pointed out the alleged blindness of the justice system when it comes to render justice to black people when they either got killed or brutalized by the police force. Referring to the New York grand jury decision to not indict a police officer in the chokehold death of Eric Garner, Governor Patrick said, “A grand jury cannot see in the video of the strangling of Eric Gardner what the rest of the world sees.” He added that “black people are the least advantaged group in America.”
President Obama, in his speech on Edmund Pettus Bridge, seemed to echo Governor Patrick when he acknowledged the march for socio-economic equality is not yet over. “We know the race is not yet won. We know reaching that blessed destination where we are judged by the content of our character requires admitting as much,” he said.
Governor Patrick also expressed optimism at the emergence of black political power and his belief in the right to vote and the resiliency of black people. “When [we] got beat down [we] got back up,” he said. “Like our forbears we need to keep on marching.”
The Tabernacle Missionary Baptist is in Selma, Dallas County, Alabama, where the first mass meeting for voting rights took place. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. – from 1922 to 1968 – spoke at this church on multiple occasions.
The church is a place “Where Christian Stewardship and Social Justice Intersect,” read in the Church members’ commemorative T-shirts of the 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday.”
More than a dozen UMass Boston students along with Africana Studies Professor Anthony Van Der Meer attended the 50th anniversary of the “Bloody Sunday” service at Tabernacle Baptist Church.

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A Member of the Tabernacle Baptist Church with the commemorative T-shirts of the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" service