Youth Activists In Selma Launch Petition to Rename Historic Bridge

"We don’t need a KKK leader’s name on the gateway to the city," the group's leader said.

A youth group in Selma, Alabama, is pushing to rename the iconic bridge where white police officers attacked hundreds of black civil rights activists demonstrating for voting rights 50 years ago, saying the bridge's namesake Edmund Pettus was a Ku Klux Klan leader.

Students UNITE, a racially diverse group of high school and college students that provides mentorship and non-violence training to at-risk youth, has launched a petition to change the bridge's name, charging that its current one represents oppression.

“The name of the bridge should be representative of the city,” the group’s executive director John Gainey, 25, told NBC. “We’re very hopeful that it will be renamed. We don’t need a KKK leader’s name on the gateway to the city.”

The name “sends the wrong message," Gainey added.

"The legacy that Edmund Pettus had, including the things he represented — we don't want to honor that," he said.

According to the Encyclopedia of Alabama, an online database maintained by the University of Alabama, Auburn University and the Alabama Department of Education, Pettus was grand dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan in 1877.

Pettus' KKK leadership is disputed, however, by Selma historian Alston Fitts, who told the Associated Press this week that he doubts Pettus was involved. "He was a pretty lousy Klan leader, if that's what he was," Fitts said.

As of Friday, the online petition to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge, launched two weeks ago, needed 41,000 more signatures for it to reach its 200,000 goal.

Gainey called that “incredible” response from supporters somewhat surprising. "We didn't really expect it to take off in the way it had,” he said. "I hope this petition will help to create a conversation.”

StudentUNITE
Students UNITE

Any possible renaming depends in large part on support from the governor and other state lawmakers, who have yet to introduce a bill.

The petition is addressed to the Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley, Selma Mayor George Patrick Evans and the U.S. National Park Services.

A spokesman for Mayor Evans told NBC that she didn't know whether Student UNITE had spoken with the mayor. The governor's office did not immediately return a call for comment.

The historic Edmund Pettus Bridge was built in 1940 and is named to honor Pettus, a Confederate general and former U.S. senator who lived in Selma, according to the Encyclopedia of Alabama.

On March 7, 1965, hundreds of black civil rights advocates made a first attempt to march 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, to protest the disenfranchisement of blacks in the South.

As they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Alabama state troopers beat the peaceful protesters with bullwhips and billy clubs and threw tear gas at them. Dozens were injured, including U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Georgia), who led the march and whose skull was fractured in the attack. 

While the momentum to rename the bridge is high, some residents in Selma oppose that move, like the city’s first black mayor, James Perkins, who was elected to his first term in 2000.

"I understand and appreciate what the movement and the young people are, but changing the name is a bad idea," Perkins said in an interview. "I don't agree with it."

"The name of the bridge helps explain the contradiction that exists in America. Sometimes it's good to keep these images in our face," he said. "If you remove it, you have a tendency to forget where you're trying to go. It's the most valuable asset we have in Selma."

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