Edmund Pettus Bridge

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The bridge is named after Edmund Winston Pettus, a lawyer, judge, Confederate brigadier general, state-level leader ("Grand Dragon") of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan, and U.S. senator.[6]

Controversy

"Pettus was the head of the most notorious White terrorist group in Alabama probably up until the civil rights movement," says John Giggie, who teaches 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.

But it's the bridge that's unique. It's the only marker that has gone from honoring white supremacy to becoming a great monument to racial equality. [1]

References