For longer than Elliott Smith can recall, annual commemorations of the historic voting rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, doubled as family reunions.
He first attended as a newborn. At Selma's iconic Edmund Pettus Bridge where demonstrators were stopped, tear gassed and brutally beaten by state troopers on the fateful “Bloody Sunday” in 1965, Smith’s great-aunt, the late Amelia Boynton Robinson, pushed him across in a stroller during the 30th commemoration.
