This morning the Alabama Senate voted to rename the setting for the civil rights movement's climax, proposing to make Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge into the "Journey to Freedom Bridge."
The reasoning is that Pettus was a Grand Dragon in the Ku Klux Klan, as well as Confederate general and Democratic U.S. senator, so it is inappropriate to honor him at the site where voting rights marchers were beaten in 1965, before later mounting a successful march from Selma to Montgomery.
The bill points out that the bridge could be named for "Bloody Sunday" march leader Rep. John Lewis, D-Atlanta or martyrs from that period. But the bill says "the young people have proposed" the Journey to Freedom Bridge.
When we were in Selma earlier this year, the bridge renaming discussion was hardly unanimous. Some movement veterans found the idea of continuing to honor Pettus repulsive, while others thought the name is such a part of the history that it should remain -- with all of the attendant irony.
The bridge renaming awaits approval by Alabama's House before it can be signed by the governor.
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