There is rising sentiment to take the Edmund Pettus name off of the bridge that crosses the Alabama River on the way out of Selma, Alabama, the county seat of Dallas County.
The bridge was built in 1940 and named for a Confederate General. In 1877, during the final year of Reconstruction, that man became the Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. In 1896, at the age of 75, he was elected to the United States Senate. [In those days the state legislatures, rather than voters, elected U. S. Senators.] His campaign relied on his organizing and promoting the Alabama Klan and his adamant opposition to recognizing and allowing implementation of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to the United States Constitution.
The 13th Amendment (ratified in 1865) eliminated slavery in the U.S. and its
territories. The 14th (ratified in 1868) granted citizenship to all
persons born or naturalized in the United States and guaranteed all citizens
“equal protection of the laws.” And the 15th Amendment (ratified in 1869)
declared that the "right of citizens of the United States to vote shall
not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of
race, color, or previous condition of servitude."
[Women citizens were not guaranteed the right to vote until the 19th Amendment
was ratified in 1920. The right to citizenship and constitutional protections,
including the right to vote, did not apply to Native Americans until 1924.]
Dallas County's Voter Registrar's Office was open only two days a month and the staff habitually came to work late, took long lunch breaks, and left early. Even when African Americans were able to get into the office to register, they were often refused registration.
Any American denied the right to vote has no say at all about who governs them -- who makes the laws and what laws they make, who enforces the laws, and who delivers "equal protection of the laws."
By the beginning of 1965 only 1% of voting aged African American residents in Dallas County were registered to vote.
There were demonstrations. Nonviolent demonstrations.
By 1965, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) led by Dr. Martin Luther King and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) led by John Lewis were working with local people in nonviolent direct action throughout the south focusing on voter registration and Black participation in elections.
In January, 1965, more than 100 Black school teachers marched from Selma's Brown Chapel to the Dallas County Courthouse to protest the arrest of Amelia Boynton a local Civil Rights activist. She was arrested by the elected County Sheriff Jim Clark. The teachers were aggressively turned away from the courthouse. They returned to Brown Chapel and held a rally. Those teachers risked losing their jobs. Schools were segregated. African Americans went to Black schools and were taught by Black teachers. White students went to White schools and were taught by White teachers. But hiring and firing of school staff for both school systems were in the hands of a single elected School Board.
Keep in mind who got to vote all those elected officials into their offices. And who did not.
In February Jimmie Lee Jackson, unarmed and participating in a peaceful voting rights march in his hometown, Marion, about 30 miles from Selma, was beaten and shot point blank by an Alabama State Trooper. He died February 26. He was trying to protect his mother.
Provoked by Jackson's murder, members of the African American community declared their plan for a symbolic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama's state capital, to lay a coffin on then Governor George Wallace's capital steps.
On March 7, 600 people met at Brown Chapel and marched two-by-two, staying on the sidewalks, not blocking the roadway.
The Alabama State Troopers were under orders from Governor George Wallace to stop the march. Sheriff Clark's posse was on the sidelines, many on horseback.
JOANNE BLAND: "We left Brown Chapel AME Church, going to the bridge, coming to the bridge, thinking that we were doing a symbolic march. It was supposed to be a symbolic thing, that we’d go and then we’d turn around and come back. But it didn’t happen that way.
"When we got to the bridge, I was in the middle of the bridge when all of a sudden they started to kneel and pray. But the men in the group came and crowded — put all the women in the middle. That was my first inkling that something was wrong, that something bad was going to happen, because that had never happened before, and I had been on hundreds of marches. And by the time we all kneeled down, I heard what I thought were gunshots and screams. So I thought they were killing the people up front, they were just shooting them. And by the time we got up enough to see what was happening, it was like the domino effect. The people from the front were running back, and people on horses were riding and beating people. Horses were stepping on people. Even coming back, the troopers had on a gas mask. But at that time I didn’t know what a gas mask was. So there were these monsters in uniform running toward us, running toward us, beating people unmercifully.
"The last thing I remember on the bridge was a horse. This man had come over the hill, and he was just beating people, just hitting anybody, and the horse bumped this lady, and she fell down. And the horse reared up, and when it came down, its hoof came down on her arm, and it broke it. And the bone came through here, and blood just went up like a fountain. It’s the last thing I remember until I woke up on this side of the bridge in the back of a car."
All three major television networks broke into their Sunday evening programming with film from what would be forever after known as Bloody Sunday.
A call went out for people of good will to come to Alabama for a march to follow two days later. And they came. People from all over the United States including 450 white clergymen. 2,000 people met at Brown Chapel and started the second march to Montgomery.
But George Wallace had gotten a Federal Judge to issue an injunction against the march.
Because of the Federal injunction, when confronted by Alabama State Troops, Dr. King turned the people around and went back across the bridge to Selma. He believed the injunction would legitimize whatever action the troopers might take.
Those who had come for the second march were asked to stay a little longer. Talks were ongoing with President Johnson to get federal protection for the marchers and legal action was being taken to get the injunction lifted for a third attempt to make the march.
That night, a group of White men beat and murdered civil rights activist James Reeb, a Unitarian Universalist minister from Boston, who had come to Selma to march with the second group.
Federal Judge Frank Johnson, Jr., ruled that the activists had the Constitutional right to march from Selma to Montgomery as a means to petition the government for the right to vote. President Johnson called up the Alabama National Guard to protect the marchers from Selma to Montgomery.
Thousands went to Alabama to join the march. 3,200 people crossed the bridge March 21, 1965.
By the time they traveled the 54 miles to Montgomery on March 25, they were 25,000 strong.
Yes, do take the Pettus name off of the bridge, but please do not name it the John Lewis Bridge as some have suggested.
Yes, Congressman Lewis did devote his life to working for all Americans to have the rights and liberties the Constitution provides for. But he was not the only one who crossed that bridge.
There were so many people who marched. Who crossed that bridge. Some of them nationally and even internationally famous -- Dr. Martin Luther King, Reverend Dr. Ralph Abernathy, Coretta Scott King, Ralph Bunche, John Lewis. James Baldwin was there. Joan Baez, and James Forman were there. Harry Belafonte and Tony Bennett were there. And some were famous in Alabama like Amelia Boynton. But most of them were like Joanne Bland, well known to their friends and families and neighbors.
Those thousands who were finally able to cross that bridge and march from Selma to Montgomery to petition their government. They were from all over America, and their one unifying principle was that all Americans should have the unfettered right to vote. They should have a say in who represents them in making decisions for their schools and town and county and country.
I cannot think that John Lewis, the man, would want his name on that bridge. That was a bridge to Freedom. Put his name on H.R. 4, the Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2019, currently awaiting passage in Congress.
