With Democratic presidential candidates blitzing states set to vote on “Super Tuesday” this week, a handful of congregants at a historic black church in Selma, Ala., delivered a stunning rebuke of Mike Bloomberg on Sunday.
Ten minutes into his remarks about voter suppression and the civil rights movement, about a dozen churchgoers stood up and turned their backs to the candidate, where they silently stayed in place for the duration of the speech.
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It was the 55th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday,” when state troopers viciously attacked black civil rights activists who marched over the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
Gathered at the Brown Chapel AME Church just blocks away from the bridge, the anti-Bloomberg churchgoers seemed to evoke the legacy of nonviolent protest immortalized on March 7, 1965.
While they didn’t utter a word, the signal they sent was loud and clear: They don’t want the ex-mayor who once championed stop-and-frisk for president.
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“I have tried to listen and I have tried to learn,” Bloomberg told the congregation, echoing his November apology for the controversial policing tactic. “I certainly gave people the opportunity to change my mind.”
“I think that it’s important for Mr. Bloomberg, Mayor Bloomberg, to hear from you, listen to you, to learn from you,” Reverend Leodis Strong said in introducing the former mayor.
Former Vice President Joe Biden had also been scheduled to speak at the church. The attendees included Jesse Jackson and Rev. Al Sharpton.
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The ex-veep and Bloomberg have split the endorsements of Alabama’s leading political groups between them. While black voters helped Biden to a landslide victory Saturday in South Carolina’s primary, Bloomberg has struggled to win over the demographic.
Before making a late entrance into the presidential race, Bloomberg took to a predominantly black megachurch in Brooklyn to apologize for his handling of stop-and-frisk, in which officers empowered to search people suspected of illegal activity disproportionately targeted blacks and Latinos.
His track record as mayor from 2002 to 2013 has defined his presidential run, with black leaders sharply divided over his legacy.