Organizers hoping to boost interest in voting rights march

Today marks the 40th anniversary of 'Bloody Sunday.'
SELMA, Ala. (AP) -- Barbershop owner Floyd Tolbert has marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge each year for nearly four decades in the annual celebration of the bloodied pilgrimage of 1965 that was a milestone in the voting rights movement.
But as some of the original marchers have grown too old to take part and others have died, not enough young people have the passion to take their places, he said.
"Older folks try to keep marching, but the younger people aren't getting into it," Tolbert said.
March veterans and organizers want today's 40th anniversary events to feel relevant to young people who were born long after the "Bloody Sunday" attack by club-wielding troopers and sheriff's deputies that who drove the marchers back over the bridge into Selma.
Entertainers featured
This year's event was to feature appearances by the official tour band of "American Idol" star Ruben Studdard and rapper Lil Scrappy and R & amp;B singer Syleena Johnson. Organizers at the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute planned a "Hip-Hop/Civil Rights Summit."
"I think we have to help them see that their future is at stake," said the Rev. Joseph Lowery, who founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference with the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and joined him on the five-day march all the way to Montgomery in 1965.
But some are concerned the event has become too commercial, diluting the meaning of the protest that inspired passage of the federal Voting Rights Act of 1965.
"It's turned into an event to see the next big rap artist," said Michelle Pullom, 29. "I have a 12-year-old daughter and whether she wants to go is a question of who's there."
Among those leading today's anniversary march will be Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who was clubbed to the ground Bloody Sunday. He will be joined by other members of congress, celebrities including Harry Belafonte, who marched in 1965, scores of activists and others.
At least some youths remained mindful of the reason for the occasion.
"I'm going to all of it," said 22-year-old Tim Vickers, a student at Concordia College in Selma. "It's a big deal. By them getting voting rights, they changed the whole world."
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