Edmund Pettus Bridge
On Sunday, March 7, 1965, six hundred peaceful marchers led by John Lewis of SNCC and Hosea Williams of SCLC attempted to cross this bridge to march to the state capital in Montgomery. They were met on the bridge's eastern apex by Alabama State Troopers and a mounted posse who beat them with billy clubs and tear-gassed them. The footage, broadcast that evening into living rooms across the country, transformed the politics of voting rights. Two weeks later — on the third attempt — the march was completed under federal protection by Lyndon Johnson's order. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was signed into law on August 6 of that year. The bridge remains named for Edmund Pettus, an Alabama-born Confederate brigadier general and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan.
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