Associated Press

Associated Press

WASHINGTON

For President Barack Obama, it’s a week to invoke America’s civil-rights struggles from past to present.

The nation’s first black president plans a speech Saturday from the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., the site of one of the movement’s stirring moments, and will refocus on last year’s fatal shooting by a white police officer of a black 18-year-old in Ferguson, Mo.

Recommendations were expected today from the president’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing, appointed after Michael Brown’s death in August. Attorney General Eric Holder expects to announce results of his department’s investigation of the case before he leaves office, and that word could come within days.

Obama’s actions are an important gesture toward the black community, which backed him in his two White House races and will be critical for Democrats in the 2016 presidential campaign and their efforts to retake control of Congress.

Former President George W. Bush and his wife, Laura, also plan to be at the Selma commemoration, and a large bipartisan congressional delegation planned to be a part of a three-day civil-rights pilgrimage to the state.

The week also highlights the personal racial politics of the first black president’s past and future as he plans Friday to make his first return to South Carolina since the 2008 primary campaign in which he and Hillary Rodham Clinton fought for the state’s black voters.