In remembrance of the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Robert Traynham, president and CEO of The Faith and Politics Institute, hosted select attendees to discuss the legacy of this Civil Rights milestone. Representative Terri Sewell (D-AL) welcomed members of Congress and luminaries to experience this Pilgrimage in her home district.
Representative Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Representative Jim Clyburn (D-SC) and Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL) were among the day’s speakers.
The 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, became known as Bloody Sunday because it ended in state troopers beating nonviolent protesters as they tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
On March 7, 1965, civil rights marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge and clashed with state police who used batons and tear gas to disperse the protesters. Marchers were struck and trampled at the bridge’s big arches, with the name Edmund Pettus emblazoned across the steel beam.
The bridge has become one of the most hallowed places in America’s civil rights history, but who was Edmund Pettus?
“Pettus was the head of the most notorious white terrorist group in Alabama, probably up until the civil rights movement,” said John Giggie, who taught southern history at the University of Alabama. Aside from being a two-term U.S. Senator and a Confederate general, Pettus was a Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.
When legislators decided to name the bridge after him back in 1940, Giggie says there’s no mistaking the message they wanted to send — especially given that the bridge, the gateway to Selma, was a huge engineering improvement over the previous one, an old swing bridge that had to be opened by hand.
In 2022, Alabama lawmakers advanced legislation to change the bridge’s name to honor those who were beaten on it as they marched for civil rights.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and others joined a march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge commemorating the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 2024.
