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I admit I didn't know Edmund Pettus was a KKK leader. Renaming the bridge after John Lewis would be a great tribute.
"Lewis joined hundreds of marchers during the 1965 protest for Black voting rights. Marchers intended to go from Selma to Montgomery, but they were stopped on the other side of the bridge in Selma and met by police officers and vigilantes with sticks and billy clubs.
When the demonstrators refused to leave, the troopers launched violent attacks using bullwhips, tear gas and nightsticks and charged at the marchers with their horses. A state trooper beat Lewis with a nightstick so severely that it caused a skull fracture.
The graphic images of the violence sparked public outrage that pushed Congress to pass the landmark Voting Rights Act, which then-President Johnson signed into law in August 1965."
Might as well, as a kind gesture, however very few people ever see that bridge. I bet 95% of Alabamians have never seen it. Selma is a dying town, it's population has been decreasing for years.
Not for it. I am a Diane Nash fan, and it wasn't just Nash, Lewis, Lawson, Abernathy etc that made the movement work. It was the collective. It was also the credibility of journalists then in the Cronkite era. When they showed video of the violence at the bridge, or firehoses on kids, they already had credibility as non partisan journalists.It changed opinions on civil rights issues in suburbia, amongst unaffected populations. That changed what was possible.
So I view the magic of the movement as the collective, and it would be disrespectful to single out anyone within it.
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