In a passionate speech about racial progress in America, President Barack Obama told thousands of people who gathered in Selma, Alabama to commemorate the 50th anniversary of "Bloody Sunday" that "our march is not yet finished. But we are getting closer."

Obama emphasised that a day of commemoration is not enough to repay the debt paid by the marchers who were brutally beaten 50 years ago as they demonstrated for voting rights, reports CNN.

"If Selma taught us anything, it's that our work is never done," the president said near Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the confrontation between authorities and marchers was captured in film and photographs that jolted the nation.