There has been much said and written this week about how far Selma has come since March 7, 1965.

Truth be told, there is still work to do, but the Selma I saw Saturday shined as never before.

While we should never forget what happened on Bloody Sunday, maybe it’s been enough time to move out of the shadows of the past and embrace the Selma of the future.

In 1965, a group of all white Alabama State Troopers met 600 protestors on the Selmont side of the Edmund Pettus Bridge with aggression, billy clubs and tear gas.

In 2015, a new generation of troopers of all races handed out bottles of water to the largest crowd to assemble in Selma since those marches.

It was 50 years ago that the Rev. Hosea Williams wasn’t even granted a few moments to pray for direction before troopers attacked under orders from then Gov. George Wallace “to use whatever measures are necessary to prevent a march.” It was yesterday that the daughters of those two men returned to Selma to stand together and help Selma remember its past, and look to its future.

In 1965, then 25-year-old student John Lewis led that group of protestors with the late Rev. Hosea Williams. By that point in his life, Lewis had already been beaten and jailed dozens of times in his peaceful fight for equal rights.

In 2015, now Congressman Lewis, bearing literal scars from those struggles, introduced the country’s first black president.

Lewis said he would have called you crazy for suggesting that would even be possible 50-years-ago.

The Selma of 1965 isn’t the Selma of today, nor is our country the same as it was 50-years ago.

In an interview recently, Lewis told me what happened in Selma changed not just Alabama, but it changed America and inspired the world.

“Selma is more than a place. It’s more than a city. It’s more than a community. It’s almost an idea that invites people to stand up for what’s right and what’s fair and what’s just,” Lewis said.

U.S. Congresswoman Terri Sewell recounted a story Saturday about Amelia Boynton Robinson, often called the matriarch of the voting rights movement. After being told repeatedly by a group of young people, “We stand on your shoulders.” The living legend implored them, “Get off my shoulders — there’s plenty of work to do.”

Selma stands at a crux of history. We can remain defined by what happened in 1965, or we can get to the business at hand. As President Barack Obama said Saturday, “We respect the past but we don’t pine for it. We don’t fear the future; we grab for it.”

More people are reaching out for that future this weekend than ever before.