Democratic congressman André Carson of Indiana traveled to Ferguson, Mo., with other members of the Congressional Black Caucus to commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. Day. According to the Associated Press, Carson compared the events in Ferguson to the civil-rights movement of the 1960s.
“Ferguson is the new Selma,” Carson said. “It’s time, in Ferguson.”
Carson was referring to the march led by King in 1965 from Selma, Ala., to the state’s capital of Montgomery to push for voting rights. The march is dramatized in a new film, Selma, which has received a Best Picture Oscar nomination.
Fellow Congressional Black Caucus member William Lacy Clay Jr. (D., Mo.) joined Carson in Ferguson. Lacy Clay spoke at a local church on Sunday and called on the parishioners to get angry.
“We need to be outraged when local law enforcement and the justice system repeatedly allow young, unarmed black men to encounter police and then wind up dead with no consequences,” Lacy Clay said. “Not just in Ferguson, but over and over again across this country.”
Lacy Clay reportedly went on to criticize the St. Louis County prosecutor’s investigation into Michael Brown’s death, while lauding the Justice Department’s ongoing civil-rights investigations into Ferguson police practices. The members of the Congressional Black Caucus also stopped to meet with several young protesters while in Ferguson.