MICHAEL BLOOMBERG did not want to be in Selma on Sunday. When the Rev. Leodis Strong invited him to participate in the 55th anniversary of the 1965 civil rights march known as “Bloody Sunday,” the former mayor at first declined, saying that he was too busy running for president. A week later, he changed his mind — or had it changed for him — and decided that attending the historic Brown Chapel the Sunday before Super Tuesday and crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge with ailing congressman and civil rights icon John Lewis wasn’t a distraction from his campaign, but an important piece of it.

Congregants at the historic Brown Chapel AME Church in Selma, Alabama, silently protested 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg as he delivered remarks there Sunday, standing and turning their backs on the former New York City mayor.

Bloomberg addressed the congregation at Brown Chapel AME Church during a church service in which he discussed voter suppression and the fight for civil rights. But roughly 10 minutes into his remarks, several in attendance rose from their seats and silently turned away from him.

The decision by The New York Times to run a front-page image on Sunday of President Obama -- and family -- leading a march to mark the 50th anniversary of the Selma civil rights clashes, while leaving out of the image former President George W. Bush and his wife Laura, apparently was mirrored in the "official White House photo" of the event.

The official White House blog's Sunday entry on the Alabama march led with a similar image, focusing on Obama and his family, as well as civil rights figures, but leaving out the Bushes.

The Bloody Sunday 50th anniversary commemoration continued Sunday with gatherings and other events in Selma before a group retraces the steps that helped secure equal voting rights 50 years ago.

As dawn broke Sunday, a crowd gathered for the Martin Luther and Coretta Scott King Unity Breakfast at Wallace Community College. Other expected events Sunday include film screenings and a pre-march rally at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Fifty years ago this weekend, a 25-year-old John Lewis was beaten so badly by Alabama state troopers that they fractured his skull.

Lewis calls the Edmund Pettus Bridge -- where the troopers and and a group of white men deputized into a posse by the sheriff attacked hundreds of peaceful protesters on Bloody Sunday, March 7, 1965 -- an "almost holy place."

President Obama's supporters sometimes wonder where the inspirational candidate of 2008 has gone. The answer is to the White House. Obama's presidency is about smaller, less inspiring questions than his 2008 campaign.

Obama's presidency is bounded by the limits of the office and the demands of the moment. It is about what America needs to do right now — the next budget, the next bill, next year's taxes, the last war. Candidates can muse. Presidents must govern.

Obama's 2008 campaign was about what kind of country America is; how to read its past to best guide i

Fifty years after a historic civil-rights confrontation at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Ala., President Barack Obama traveled there to commemorate the marchers with a soaring speech that celebrated how far the U.S. has come, but also criticized what he considers modern-day assaults on voting rights.