Organizers of Jubilee announced at a Tuesday press conference that Susan Taylor, editorial director of Essence Magazine, will be the guest speaker at an event honoring women of the movement prior to the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

The brunch-starting at 8:45 a.m. at the Selma Convention Center- will be sponsored by the local Sister Circle chapter.

The event will feature women from across the southeast, including Coretta Scott King, Congresswoman Maxine Watters, Cynthia McKinney and other more visible giants from the Civil Rights movement.

The event will end in a Washing of the Tears Ceremony that will be conducted by Dr. Adelaide Sanford, vice-president of the Board of Regents for the State of New York.

“That is not a name that is well known here,” organizer Faya Rose Toure said. “She is the only African-American that has ever held that position, she’s a powerful educator.”

The local Sister Circle sponsoring the event is part of a movement of Sister Circles, founded by Taylor.

The event will take place Sunday, March 6 and the cost will be $25 for adults and $10 for youth.

Both men and women are invited.

“Many of these women suffered atrocities that you would never imagine during the movement and many of them remained damaged,” Toure said. “This is an opportunity to say ‘thank you.'”

All proceeds will go to sponsor a monument to women of the movement, Amelia Boynton and Marie Foster.

“What people fail to recognize about five back in the line were two women, Amelia Boynton and Marie Foster,” Toure said. “These were the women that caught most of the blows from that march. Everything will go to the monument.

The SCLC women with Evelyn Lowery have been putting monuments for years and we join the SCLC women.”

Tickets are available at the National Voting Rights Museum.

Also, the ministers of the movement will be honored at a Sunrise Unity Service earlier that morning.

Ambassador Andrew Young, a key aid to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., will be the guest speaker.

The Selma High Choir will sing in tribute to Dr. and Mrs. King and she will be presented with a special award in his honor.

Local churches and choirs are invited to participate.