A 1,400-kilometer protest march to Washington has begun in Selma, 50 years after the city's historic 1965 march for African-American rights.

The Rev. Theresa Dear noted the magnitude of what lies ahead, but never doubted that the "40-day-and-40-night" march will be successful.

Dear told the Montgomery Advertiser just before the march began at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, "We are doing something of biblical proportions."

Sponsored by the NAACP, "America's Journey for Justice" is scheduled to extend through eastern seaboard states before ending in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 15.

More than 200 supporters took part in the first leg of a march that will be about 16 times the 54-mile (87-kilometer) distance covered by voting rights activists in 1965.