Obama honors 'sacrifice in the face of wanton violence’

Still, watching an African-American president speak on the spot where African-Americans were beaten for protesting the right to vote, Rep. Marc Veasey (D-Texas) said he was thinking about his 103-year-old grandmother.

"For individuals like her that lived through Edmund Pettus, that lived through separate washrooms, that lived through voting lines being drawn to at-large districts where African-Americans never had any real power," Veasey said. "For them to finally see that, to see their work come to fruition, it's very moving for me."