The president will deliver an address on Saturday in front of Selma’s Edmund Pettus bridge, scene of the bloody crackdown of civil rights marchers in 1965.
Related: Fifty years after Selma, Alabama at the heart of a new civil rights struggle
As the first black president, Obama is under pressure from civil rights leaders to use the 50th anniversary of the march to take a more forceful stand against discriminatory policing and the failure to prosecute officers who kill black men and boys.
The Edmund Pettus bridge remains a potent symbol of the abusive state power which was overcome by a campaign of non-violence that culminated in the Voting Rights Act. Television pictures of Alabama state troopers beating civil rights marchers half a century ago were etched into the collective consciousness.
On the eve of his trip to Selma, Obama spoke in unusually forthright terms about police racism, and alluded to the deaths of Eric Garner, 43, and Michael Brown, 18, who were killed by police in New York and Ferguson respectively last year.
“Our goal should be to stop circumstances such as Ferguson or what happened in New York from happening again,” he said on a visit to South Carolina’s Benedict College on Friday.
The president said he was planning to use his address to urge younger generations to take positive inspiration from Selma and the wider civil rights movement.
“Selma is now,” he told students. “Selma is about the courage of ordinary people doing extraordinary things because they believe they can change the country, that they can shape our nation’s destiny. Selma is about each of us asking ourselves what we can do to make America better.”
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The president has occasionally stumbled when speaking about race during his six years in the White House. He was heavily criticised over his response to rioting in Ferguson in August, over Brown’s death, and November, over the decision not to bring charges against the officer who shot him, Darren Wilson.
This week the Department of Justice (DoJ) announced it would not bring federal civil rights charges against Wilson. It was one of a string of major developments that have thrust concerns about the criminal justice system to the fore in the days leading up to Obama’s arrival` in Selma.
On Monday, the White House task force he created in the wake of crisis in policing unveiled an underwhelming set of proposals that few experts believe truly transform the way minority communities are policed.
On Wednesday, the DoJ released the findings of an investigation – separate from the one that decided against bringing federal civil rights charges against Wilson.
The damning report concluded the police department and court system “reflect and exacerbate” discrimination in Ferguson and unearthed racist emails – including some alluding to Obama.
Less than 24 hours before Obama was due to arrive in Selma, the second-highest ranking commander in Ferguson police department was one of two officers to resign. The US attorney general, Eric Holder, who was accompanying Obama on his trip to South Carolina, said he was prepared to dismantle Ferguson’s entire force if it did not agree to major reforms.
Obama told students the report showed the criminal justice system in Ferguson was “broken and racially biased”. “What we saw was that the Ferguson police department, in conjunction with the municipality, saw traffic stops, arrests, tickets as a revenue generator as opposed to serving the community,” he said.
“And that it systematically was biased against African Americans in that city who were stopped, harassed, mistreated, abused, called names, fined.” The president added: “It was an oppressive and abusive situation.”
Whole Obama said he did not believe the situation in Ferguson was typical of other police departments, he said it was “not a complete aberration” either.
“It’s something that happens,” he said. “And one of the things that I think frustrated the people of Ferguson, in addition to the specific case of Michael Brown, was this sense of, you know: we’ve been putting up with this for years, and now when we start talking about it, everybody is pretending like it’s just our imaginations, like we’re just paranoid.”
Advisers to the president say that his remarks on Saturday are expected to remain broad and he is unlikely to delve into the situation in Ferguson in detail. But they say events over the last week have strengthened Obama’s resolve to use the address to tackle head-on discrimination in the crimination justice system.
In addition to Obama, the first lady, and their daughters, Malia and Sasha, former president George W Bush and his wife, Laura, will also attend the event. More than 100 lawmakers from Washington DC have also flown in to be present for the commemoration.
Related: Selma through my father's eyes: 'What did these people die for?'
Most will have left by Sunday, when the annual re-enactment of the march across the Alabama river will taken place. Organisers are estimating as many as 100,000 people will visit the small, still effectively segregated town this weekend, although city officials say they do not expect quite so many to come.
Still, thousands had already arrived in Selma by Friday night – some, who had driven from states such as Missouri, Indiana and Illinois, were still wearing the hats and gloves they had worn while driving through snow storms 12 hours earlier.
No hotel rooms were available within a 100-mile radius of Selma, with reports of shortages in nearby Montgomery and Birmingham. In Selma, the town’s downtown area has been transformed, with flags, crowd barriers and sound systems surrounding a stage constructed in front of the bridge.
Meanwhile, graffiti has begun appearing on the walls of some unoccupied buildings in the area. It is composed of the simple slogan: #BlackLivesMatter."
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