In remembrance of the 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, Robert Traynham, president and CEO of The Religion and Politics Institute, hosted choose attendees to debate the legacy of this Civil Rights milestone. Consultant Terri Sewell (D-AL) welcomed members of Congress and luminaries to expertise this Pilgrimage in her house district.
Consultant Pete Aguilar (D-CA), Senator Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD), Consultant Jim Clyburn (D-SC) and Consultant Byron Donalds (R-FL) had been among the many day’s audio system.
The 1965 Voting Rights March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, grew to become referred to as Bloody Sunday as a result of it resulted 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 gasoline to disperse the protesters. Marchers had been struck and trampled on the bridge’s huge arches, with the identify Edmund Pettus emblazoned throughout the metal beam.
The bridge has grow to be one of the crucial hallowed locations in America’s civil rights historical past, however who was Edmund Pettus?
“Pettus was the top of essentially the most infamous white terrorist group in Alabama, in all probability up till the civil rights motion,” mentioned John Giggie, who taught southern historical past on the College of Alabama. Other than being a two-term U.S. Senator and a Accomplice common, Pettus was a Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.
When legislators determined to call the bridge after him again in 1940, Giggie says there’s no mistaking the message they needed to ship — particularly on condition that the bridge, the gateway to Selma, was an enormous engineering enchancment over the earlier one, an outdated swing bridge that needed to be opened by hand.
In 2022, Alabama lawmakers superior laws to alter the bridge’s identify to honor those that had been crushed on it as they marched for civil rights.
Former Vice President Kamala Harris, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff and others joined a march throughout the Edmund Pettus Bridge commemorating the 59th anniversary of Bloody Sunday in 2024.
