For this year's July Fourth post I thought I'd try a trivia question and I thought I'd use something related to the Civil Rights movement. I think this one will be pretty easy. Everyone's seen this bridge before, but this isn't the best view of it. What I'll say is that it occupies an important place in the Civil Rights movement. Here's a different angle.
That is the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. Civil rights workers, including our 2014 law school commencement speaker, John Lewis, were beaten as they tried to cross it in a peaceful demonstration. The events were filmed, and shown on television around the nation.
The Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama? Thank you for posting. Happy Fourth of July Faculty Lounge!
Very nicely done, LeAnna! Nice to have a movie star hanging out with us.
Inspired by events in Marion, Alabama, on a certain Sunday in March 1965 marchers crossed this bridge to an uncertain future in the near term and, shortly afterwards a fifty mile walk to Montgomery and the votings rights act of 1965 thereafter.
Update–Richard's comment was caught in our spam filter; sorry about that — I've now fished it out.
Happy Fourth of July to everyone!
The name Edmund Pettus must have rolled off my lips many times. I even walked up on the bridge with my wife a number of years ago. I decided to look him up. He was a confederate soldier who eventually became a general by the end of the war. He had a penchant for getting captured and on three or four occasions became a prisoner of war. After the war was over he became the Grand Dragon of the Alabama KKK. It is ironic that his name has become intertwined with a major event of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
Thanks for this, Bill. More evidence of the unexpected outdoing itself in its power to surprise, as Ellison said. I always like to think about how far our nation has traveled, especially on days like the Fourth of July.