Photo Caption: A group of U.S. bishops and other participants pose outside the Legacy Museum: From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration in Montgomery, Ala., during a recent pilgrimage to Montgomery and Selma. The museum displays the history of slavery and racism in America. This includes the enslavement of African Americans, racial lynchings, segregation and racial bias. (OSV News photo/Catholic Mobilizing Network)

A group of Catholic bishops recently traveled to Montgomery and Selma, Alabama, in what trip organizers called a “powerful encounter” amid the nation’s long-running reckoning with racism.

Archbishop Shelton J. Fabre of Louisville, Kentucky, former chairman of the U.S. bishops’ Ad Hoc Committee Against Racism, and current committee chair retired Auxiliary Bishop Joseph N. Perry of Chicago hosted a March 18-20 “Bishops’ Lenten Experience” in the two cities, which were the endpoints of a five-day, 54-mile nonviolent march led by civil rights leader and pastor the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in support of voting rights for Black Americans. At its March 25, 1965, conclusion on the steps of the Capitol in Montgomery, Rev. King told the 25,000 participants, “There never was a moment in American history more honorable and more inspiring.”

Pictured: National Museum for Peace and Justice, Montgomery, AL.; The Legacy Museum sculpture, Montgomery, AL.