The family of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr and their supporters have marched in Washington urging passage of a law to protect voters from racial discrimination.
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As part of the annual Martin Luther King Jr Day DC Peace Walk, the King family and more than 100 national and local civil rights groups strode across the Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge on Monday calling on President Joe Biden's Democrats to pass a bill in the US Senate.
The march followed a disappointing week for Biden, who went to the Capitol to urge Senate colleagues to change filibuster rules so they could overcome Republican opposition to the bill, only to be rejected by two conservative Democrats who effectively hold veto power in the evenly split chamber.
In a speech live-streamed to the late Reverend King's Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Vice-President Kamala Harris also urged the Senate to act, warning that efforts to restrict voting in some US states could make it more difficult for millions of Americans to vote.
"We must not give up, and we must not give in," Harris said. "To truly honour the legacy of the man we celebrate today, we must continue to fight for the freedom to vote, for freedom for all."
At a rally before Monday's March, King's son, Martin Luther King III, praised Democrats for passing a sweeping infrastructure bill last year, but implored them to push through voting-rights legislation.
"You were successful with infrastructure, which was a great thing," King said to a crowd of hundreds, "but we need you to use that same energy to ensure that all Americans have the unencumbered right to vote."
King III, his wife, Arndrea Waters King, and their daughter Yolanda Renee King, led the march across the bridge.
The bill before the Senate would expand access to mail-in voting, strengthen federal oversight of elections in states with a history of racial discrimination and tighten campaign finance rules.
Democratic supporters argue it is needed to counter a wave of new restrictions on voting passed in Republican-led states that election observers say would make it harder for minority and low-income voters to cast ballots.
New restrictions have emerged following former president Donald Trump's false claims that his 2020 election defeat was the result of widespread fraud.
Top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said the chamber would take up the bill on Tuesday.
Republicans, who hold half the 100 seats in the Senate, oppose the bill, which they brand a partisan power grab. That leaves Biden and Schumer needing to persuade conservative Democratic senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to agree to change the chamber's filibuster rule that requires at least 60 senators to agree on most legislation.
Monday's holiday marks what would have been the 93rd birthday of King, who was 39 when he was assassinated in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee.
Australian Associated Press