Push to rename Selma bridge gains opposition
‘Bloody Sunday’ landmark in Alabama symbolizes freedom
SELMA, Ala. — Thousands gathered in this river city in 1940 to dedicate a new bridge in honor of white supremacist Edmund Pettus, a Confederate general and reputed Ku Klux Klan leader. Just 25 years later, the bridge became a global landmark when civil rights marchers were beaten at its base.
Today, with thousands protesting nationwide against racial injustice, a years-old push is gaining steam to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in honor of Rep. John Lewis, who led the 1965 marchers on “Bloody Sunday.” But the idea is drawing opposition in Selma, including from some who marched with Lewis that day.
Pettus’ name has ironically come to also symbolize Black freedom and shouldn’t be painted over, some say. Others oppose the move because Lewis was an outsider who followed in the footsteps of locals who had worked to end segregation for years before he arrived. Still others fear a change would hurt tourism in a poor town with little going for it other than its civil rights history.
Lynda Lowery, who was 14 and received 35 stitches in her head on Bloody Sunday, doesn’t want the bridge renamed for anyone. She said the span over the muddy Alabama
River “isn’t a monument, it’s a part of history.”
“They need to leave my bridge alone,” said Lowery, 70.
Lowery’s younger sister, Jo Ann Bland, who also was among the estimated 600 marchers on March 7, 1965, long opposed renaming the bridge. But amid widespread demonstrations since the police killing of George Floyd in Minnesota, she now tentatively supports renaming the span for local “foot soldiers,” not Lewis.
“John Lewis is my hero; he’s been my hero since I was a child,” said Bland. “I followed him up on that
Edmund Pettus Bridge. But I and John were not the only ones there.”
The bridge was named for Pettus, who fought for the Confederacy and was a reputed KKK grand wizard who served in the U.S. Senate at a time when Jim Crow laws gave white people near-total control in Alabama. He died in 1907.
On the day of the 1940 bridge dedication, which some 7,000 attended, a parade included a float depicting slaves. The town newspaper printed a laudatory biography which said Pettus was “devoted wholly to the upbuilding of our state and the bringing of order out of the chaos of carpetbaggery and negro dominance” after the Civil War.
Online petitions to rename the bridge have been around since at least 2015, the year then-president Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush visited Selma to mark the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, when state troopers beat voting rights marchers as they crossed the bridge on the way to Montgomery, the capital.
Lewis, a native of southeast Alabama, was at the front of the long column and was badly injured. Hospitalized briefly, he went on to a career in politics and has represented Atlanta in Congress since 1987.
In 2015, Lewis and Democratic U.S. Rep. Terri Sewell, the lone African American in Alabama’s congressional delegation, co-authored an opinion piece opposing any change to the bridge’s name.
“Changing the name of the Bridge would compromise the historical integrity of the voting rights movement,” they said.
But much has changed since then. Lewis was diagnosed with advanced pancreatic cancer in December, and the drive to eradicate Confederate symbols gained momentum after Floyd’s death; multiple rebel monuments have come down since.
Local leaders see tourism as a way to bring new money into Selma, where 41 percent of residents live in poverty and large employers are scarce, and they’re concerned that changing the bridge’s name might give people one less reason to visit town.