Civil rights leaders kicked off a 40-day march across the South from Selma to Washington, D.C., to highlight the severity of racial injustice in America. The march will last 40 days and will reach its last stop in the nation's capitol on Sept. 15.

“We are doing something of biblical proportions,” Rev. Theresa Dear told the Montgomery Advertiser.

The march, entitled "America’s Journey to Justice," started this past Saturday in Selma, Alabama, a city that was pivotal to the civil rights movement. In 1965, peaceful protesters attempting to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge were brutally attacked in what's known as Bloody Sunday on March 7, 1965. These attacks eventually captured the nation’s attention, aiding in the passage of the influential Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Organizers of "Journey to Justice" have expressed the need for a long-time commitment to change. “Teach-ins” and other events will take place in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia while the NAACP hopes thousands will join them in the march’s closing rally in September.

“We can continue to be serially outraged, or we can engage in an outrageously patriotic demonstration with a commitment to bringing about reform in this country,” said Cornell William Brooks, president and chief executive of the NAACP. 

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(Photo: Scott Olson/Getty Images)