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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsJohn Lewis makes final journey across Edmund Pettus Bridge in horse-drawn caisson
The late US Rep. John Robert Lewis made his final journey on Sunday across the famous bridge in Selma, Alabama, where the towering civil rights figure helped lead a march for voting rights in 1965 that came to be a key part of his legacy.
Following a short ceremony outside of Brown Chapel AME Church on Sunday, Lewis' body traveled on a horse-drawn caisson through several blocks of downtown Selma to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where Lewis' flag-draped casket crossed. It was on that bridge that a 25-year-old Lewis and other marchers were met by heavily armed state and local police who attacked them with clubs, fracturing Lewis' skull.
The caisson paused when it reached the bridge's steel arch that bears its name.
The final crossing provided a new chapter in the history of the bridge and Lewis' relationship to it: The concrete and steel structure that was once stained with blood during the violent clash was covered with rose petals on Sunday, a somber moment to honor the fallen civil rights icon that stood in marked contrast to the scene in which Lewis was brutalized 55 years ago.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/john-lewis-makes-final-journey-across-edmund-pettus-bridge-in-horse-drawn-caisson/ar-BB17cN1m?li=BBnbcA1&ocid=DELLDHP
HipChick
(25,485 posts)lunatica
(53,410 posts)Soon the name Edmund Pettis will be gone from our consciousness As this bridge gets renamed for John Lewis. A man who led us into a better future as a country.
And may it not be the last renaming we see!
lunatica
(53,410 posts)of the march over that bridge. The fact that it was on film, for all of us to see, was crucial to the ability of all Americans to see what Black people were up against. It proved that if we see it happen it makes a great impact. The fact we saw for ourselves the murder of George Floyd is what brought us all out to support BLM, and why that support will never go away.
I feel like Ive lived to see a completed cycle of what happened to a great Civil Rights leader. The bridge itself is symbolic of what Civil Rights means.
I feel fortunate to be a witness of such greatness in the face of such cruelty. I feel that now we are watching the death of White Supremacy, and it makes me feel very good.
R B Garr
(17,011 posts)RIP.
Jeebo
(2,034 posts)I was in the ninth grade in Albert G. Parrish High School in Selma when the Selma-to-Montgomery march happened. I haven't lived there since 1971, but my parents and an older brother are buried there and I still have two first cousins who live there. Other than that, I have almost no reason other than curiosity and nostalgia ever to visit there again.
But curiosity and nostalgia are sufficient, and I do visit there for a day or two every three or four years or so. In 2009 I noticed they had renamed Jeff Davis Ave. to J.L. Chestnut Boulevard. Chestnut was a Selma civil rights attorney who figured prominently in the 1965 march.
Now they're going to rename the bridge for John Lewis, and it's about time.
-- Ron
DashOneBravo
(2,679 posts)It was very moving.