Bloody Sunday in Selma, Alabama

It’s the Bill & Hillary & Barack Show in Selma today as politicians of all stripes plan to make the traditional walk across the Edmund Pettus Bridge to commemorate the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery March.

Hillary Clinton is starting the day with a breakfast meeting in Montgomery with leaders from the Alabama Democratic Party before heading over to Selma to speak at the black First Baptist Church on the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. St. and Jeff Davis Ave.

Barack Obama is the featured speaker at the Martin and Coretta Scott King Beloved Community Unity Breakfast at Wallace Community College and will afterward address the congregation at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church.

Throw Alabama’s Republican Governor Bob Riley in the mix, assorted members of Congress, state legislators, mayors and dogcatchers and you have a jolly big crowd. And oh yes, I nearly forgot, former President Bill Clinton is being inducted into the National Voting Rights Museum & Institute.

Black and white alike, politician and not, they’ll all join in to walk across that famous bridge. While some politicians have said this is not “political” but a spiritual experience (Rep. John Lewis, D-GA), you can bet your booty that this is political. Alabama’s lone black U.S. Representative, Artur Davis from Birmingham, is one of the first leaders to pick sides. The Montgomery Advertiser says in today’s paper, Davis, who urged Obama to travel to Selma, has said the senator’s candidacy would “ignite a feeling of national purpose and renewal that our country has not witnessed in my lifetime.” He could be right. There is energy and today, Selma will be host to several people with higher aspirations, Davis included.