SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (KELO) -- People across the country are remembering civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. Monday. Part of his legacy includes leading a march from Selma, Alabama to the state capitol in Montgomery in March of 1965. Demonstrators were fighting racial voter discrimination. Biden commutes Leonard Peltier’s life sentence It's been nearly 60 years since that march to Montgomery. 97-year-old Luverne resident Richard Harrison remembers it well. That's because Harrison, an Illinois pastor at the time, took part in the march. "As a Christian, God was calling me to go," Harrison said. Harrison marched on the first and last days of the demonstration that spanned several days. There were restrictions on the number of marchers on the days in between. "Because it was a two-lane highway, very busy and there were swamps and forest on either side at times," Harrison said. When he wasn't marching, he was assisting with the demonstration. "Each day we would hitchhike out to where the marchers were going to end that night and we would get the place ready, and it would be in a farmer's field or something like that. We'd pick up cowpies and get it ready so we could set up tents," Harrison said. The demonstration ended with tens of thousands of people. "It was amazing. There were about 25,000 people by that time," Harrison said. What really stands out to Harrison is the change that came after the march. He recalls the talk among some of the locals in Selma. "They said, when you go back up north we're going to make the N word out of these Negroes again. And I talked to our friends and said, 'Did we make a mistake by coming here? Will it be harder for you now?' And they said, 'No, you were an answer to our prayers. And because you came, we were able to have our march. And once we get to vote, we'll be able to make some differences,'" Harrison said. Just months after the March, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 into law.