Forty-seven years after a pivotal event in the civil rights movement, more than 20 members of the U.S. Congress joined civil rights leaders to re-enact the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, that came to be known as Bloody Sunday.

On March 7, 1965, nearly 600 protesters who had gathered to support an effort to register black voters in Selma were beaten by state police, sprayed with tear gas and charged by troopers on horseback. The televised images of violence by police against unarmed and peaceful protesters swayed public opinion around the world in favor of the civil rights movement.

Among those marching March 4 (above) was Representative John Lewis, a congressman from Atlanta who was among the protesters attacked in 1965. “The distance we’ve come and the progress we’ve made is evident here today,” Lewis told USA Today. “The governor back then wouldn’t let us come to the steps of the Capitol. This is a very moving day for me.”