The NAACP just kicked off a 40-day march through the South to highlight racial injustice

The NAACP kicked off a 40-day march through the U.S. South on Saturday meant to highlight issues of racial injustice in the country, Reuters reports. The Journey for Justice organizers started with a civil rights rally in Selma, Alabama, a city key to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

The march was sparked by the many recent instances of police officers killing unarmed black men, including Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner in Staten Island, New York.

"We can continue to be serially outraged, or we can engage in an outrageously patriotic demonstration with a commitment to bringing about reform in this country," NAACP President Cornell William Brooks said.

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Marchers will conduct teach-ins in Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, as they make their way to Washington, D.C., for a final rally Sept. 16.