When President Joe Biden landed here Sunday, he met a city frozen in time.Brick buildings, aging and largely untouched since the days its inhabitants helped ignite the country’s civil rights movement nearly six decades ago, line the streets. Empty storefronts dot both sides of the main drag — Broad Street — where the famed Edmund Pettus Bridge is located. Typically, the city is quiet. But on the first weekend of every March, the streets come alive.On Sunday, hours before Biden stepped foot on the bridge, white vendor tents covered almost every corner, many selling T-shirts emblazoned with the face of the late Rep. John Lewis or a $13 plate of fried fish.

Speaking just at the base of the bridge, Biden pressed for the passage of voting rights legislation. He also reiterated his call for the Senate to eliminate the filibuster to help clear the way for Congress to enact the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.

Local residents — and those that make the sojourn every year — welcomed the attention. Everyone here noted the anniversary is the city’s only notable event.“The country sees Selma as purely a historic place, as a monument,” Oni Scott, a college student visiting from New York, told POLITICO. “I feel like a lot of people do come down here for Jubilee and for this weekend. But then every other time I come here, it’s completely empty.”…Fewer than 18,000 people are estimated to live in Selma, which is 84 percent Black, according to the 2020 census. Nearly one-third of the population live below the poverty line, although local leaders expect it may now be far more after a tornado with 130 mph winds ripped through the city in January…Joann Bland, a “Bloody Sunday” survivor who helped lead a movement to build Foot Soldiers Park, a standing monument to the site where protestors gathered before the march, said she had wanted Biden to further invest in the city and help rebuild a community devastated by a tornado that deepened decadesold infrastructure problems.“I want him to say he put in some resources in Selma. I want him to say they’re not putting a Band-Aid on Selma, give me $2 and think you gave me something,” Bland said before Biden’s speech, at an unveiling event for a park mural. “I want him to say he’s going to do something concrete here in Selma to help with our rebuild. He said ‘build back better.’ Then he needs to put the resources here to do that.”