The Edmund Pettus Bridge

Looking north on US Route 80.
Broad Street and Selma, Alabama are in the background.

 Our drive from Montgomery north to Birmingham took us on US Route 80 which includes the Edmund Pettus bridge. Edmund Pettus was a proud Confederate General, Ku Klux Klan leader, and later Senator from Alabama from 1897 until his death in 1907. It is difficult to change the name of a historic site in Alabama, so the name of the bridge has remained the same.

March 7, 1965 ("Bloody Sunday"):  John Lewis and Hosea Williams led 600 peaceful civil rights marchers. They were greeted on the bridge by state troopers and local deputies wielding billy clubs and spraying tear gas. Many marchers were hospitalized.

March 9, 1965 ("Turnaround Tuesday"):  Two days after Bloody Sunday, Martin Luther King, Jr. led roughly 2,500 marchers. Upon meeting a state trooper blockade, Dr. King led a prayer, and turned the group around to avoid additional bloodshed, and to comply with a federal restraining order.

March 21-25, 1965:  U.S. District Court Judge Frank M. Johnson, Jr. ruled that the demonstrators had a constitutional right to march. President Lyndon B. Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard, and deployed federal troops and FBI agents to protect the marchers from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. The march was led by multiple Civil Rights leaders including Martin Luther King, Jr. and John Lewis.

Jessica, Erica, and I parked the car in Selma after driving across the bridge. We walked the 1,248-foot-long bridge across the Alabama River on that hot, bright, early October day. After relaxing in a small park on the other side, we walked back. Knowing what had transpired, we found it an eerie experience.