On March 17, 1965, even as the Selma-to-Montgomery marchers fought for the right to carry out their protest, President Lyndon Johnson addressed a joint session of Congress, calling for federal voting rights legislation to protect African Americans from barriers that prevented them from voting. Edmund Winston Pettus (born July 6, 1821 – July 27, 1907) was an American politician who represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1897 to 1907. Community Rules apply to all content you upload or otherwise submit to this site. He will always be bloodied, from a nightstick to the head, crumpled on the ground, because the two men decided it was better to stride toward equality than jump into the flowing waters below. In early 1965, Martin Luther King, Jr. and the SCLC decided to make Selma, located in Dallas County, Alabama, the focus of a black voter registration campaign. Or close to it. It greatly reduced the disparity between black and white voters in the U.S. and allowed greater numbers of African Americans to participate in politics and government at the local, state and national level. He suffered a fractured skull when Alabama state troopers beat marchers trying to cross the bridge to bring awareness to racial inequities in voting registration. The bridge path itself is moderately wide, however, cars travel fast across it and exiting the bri, First off, this is, after all just a bridge so it looks like a bridge and is not fancy in any way. Pettus is buried In Live Oak Cemetery, just 2.3 miles from the span that opened in 1940, a symbolic gateway to white supremacy. If you care about the Civil Rights Movement then the Edmund Pettus Bridge will mean something to you. King then turned the protesters around, believing that the troopers were trying to create an opportunity that would allow them to enforce a federal injunction prohibiting the march. By the time they reached the capitol on Thursday, March 25, they were 25,000-strong. This is a must see! Edmund Pettus Bridge On March 9, King led more than 2,000 marchers, black and white, across the Edmund Pettus Bridge but found Highway 80 blocked again by state troopers. During that time, Giggie said Pettus became "the state's most powerful political broker" and said younger politicians would go to him for counsel and advice. Simple walk across the bridge with a powerful story to tell. He will always be the stone-faced leader of some 600 men and women, marching from historic Brown Chapel AME toward and across the bridge, peacefully striding toward the state capital 54 miles away to inform Gov. “I thought I saw death,” Lewis later told an interviewer and doubtlessly recalled many, many times since that Sunday. “Naming the bridge after Pettus was a fairly bold act undertaken by the state at the time,” Giggie said. And we shall overcome.”. What it is, to me, is the location where so many people of color put their lives on the line, meeti. “A little.”. We were in Mobile and decided to drive to Selma at the recommendation of a local. His blood will forever stain it. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local. Rights equal to those of all citizens. Almost 6,000 names are on a petition encouraging the Alabama Legislature to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma for the man whose courage helped transform the 1,248.1 feet spanning the Alabama River into sacred ground: U.S. Rep. John Lewis. more. Ralph Bunche, who participated in the Selma to Montgomery March with Martin Luther King, Jr., won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1950 for his successful negotiation of an Arab-Israeli truce in Palestine a year earlier. Eventually, he rose to lieutenant colonel, before becoming brigadier general in 1863. more. Pettus "was deeply invested in electing congressmen and senators to Washington who would protect this idea of endangered white power," said John Giggie, associate professor of history at the University of Alabama and director of the Summersell Center for the Study of the South. In the Democratic Party, Pettus served as chairman of the Alabama delegation to each national convention from 1872-1896. After walking some 12 hours a day and sleeping in fields along the way, they reached Montgomery on March 25.
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