Selma, Alabama - President Joe Biden emphasized the need for federal voting protections but once again avoided calls for reparations while visiting Selma to mark the 58th anniversary of Bloody Sunday.

"No matter how hard some people try, we can't just choose to learn what we want to know and not what we should know: the good, the bad, the truth of who we are as a nation. And everyone should know the truth of Selma," Biden said while standing before the Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of the March 7, 1965, Bloody Sunday march.

On that fateful day, hundreds of demonstrators, led by the late John Lewis, attempted to cross the bridge on their way to Montgomery. They were met by white law enforcement officers, who brutally attacked them for standing up for Black-American voting rights and protections.

The violence was broadcast on national television and marked a turning point in the US Civil Rights Movement. Just five months later, Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

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"600 believers put faith into action to march across that bridge, named after the Grand Dragon of the KKK. They were on their way to the state capital of Montgomery to claim their fundamental right to vote laid in the bedrock of our Constitution but stolen by hate harbored in too many hearts," Biden continued in his remarks.

"They forced the country to confront the hard truth and to act to keep the promise of America alive."

While Selma represents ground zero in the fight for voting rights, Biden noted that that legacy is under the threat from rightwing forces attempting to drag the country backwards.

"As I come here in commemoration – not for show – Selma is a reckoning," the president said. "The right to vote, to have your vote counted, is the threshold of democracy and liberty. With it, anything is possible. Without it, without that right, nothing is possible. And this fundamental right remains under assault."

In recent years, the conservative-majority Supreme Court has gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act of many of its most meaningful protections against racial discrimination.

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GOP-controlled state legislatures – Alabama's included – have used the opportunity to pass a slew of voter suppression laws and gerrymandered congressional maps that disparately impact Black Americans.

While the Biden administration has appointed a record number of Black female judges, including Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the president acknowledged this is not enough to stop the assault on ballot access.

"We know that we must get the votes in Congress to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act. I made it clear, I will not let a filibuster obstruct the sacred right to vote," Biden reiterated, referring to the federal voting rights push tanked by Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema along with all Republicans.

"My message to you is this: We see you. We're fighting to make sure no one's left behind. This is a time of choosing, and we need everyone engaged. We know history does not look kindly on those who denied the march across the bridge to redeem the soul of America," he added.

Biden's speech then turned into a laundry list of his administration's accomplishments as the president touched on everything from Covid relief to gun safety laws to infrastructure investments.

But as Biden laid out the path toward a more just future, his remarks left one glaring omission: reparations.

Racial justice advocates, joined by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, had urged Biden to use his executive authority to create a reparations commission just one day before he landed in Alabama.

The need to acknowledge and atone for the evils of enslavement, Jim Crow, and present-day racist policies is all the more pressing given the recent attacks on voting rights, advocates said, insisting that Selma's history of Black resistance cannot be separated from today's demand for reparations.

Though a federal reparations commission was listed in his 2020 campaign plan, Biden once again sidestepped the question on Sunday.