The nation's first Black and first female vice president called the Israel-Hamas war a "humanitarian catastrophe" while also stressing the necessity of a cease fire in Gaza.

“Given the immense scale of suffering in Gaza, there must be an immediate cease-fire, at least for the next six weeks,” Harris said in Selma, Ala.

Harris said that "people in Gaza are starving."

President Joe Biden has been under  pressure to demand a cease-fire in the five-month war. It began after Hamas militants stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing about 1,200 people and taking 250 others hostage. Over 30,000 Palestinians have reportedly died in the war, most of them women and children

The Edmund Pettus Bridge was the site of the conflict of "Bloody Sunday" on March 7, 1965 when police attacked Civil Rights Movement demonstrators led by Martin Luther King Jr. with horses, billy clubs, and tear gas as they were attempting to march across the bridge from Selma, Alabama to the state capital in Montgomery.

This year is the 59th anniversary commemorating the historic "Bloody Sunday" event that prompted Congress to pass the Voting Rights Act of 1965

To this day Congressional Democrats remain concerned about voting access to Blacks and other vulnerable groups as they continue to demand sweeping voter rights changes through federal legislation and state legislation crafted by Republican-dominated state legislatures across the country.

The conservative-leaning U.S. Supreme Court, in 2013, struck down the provision of the Voting Rights Act that required Southern states to get federal court approval to adopt or substantively amend state voting rights laws.