Ala. Senate votes to rename Edmund Pettus Bridge

The Alabama Senate on Wednesday voted to rename Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, site of 1965's Bloody Sunday and the subsequent Selma-to-Montgomery March.

The resolution, sponsored by Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, would rename the 75-year-old bridge the Journey to Freedom Bridge, following a grassroots movement by a group called Students UNITE to rename the structure. The group collected 180,000 signatures on a change.org petition urging the renaming.

"There are many things in our society to change that are more significant than the name of a bridge, but removing this vestige of the past will serve as a parallel to the ongoing journey towards equal rights, fair representation and open opportunity," the resolution says.

The resolution still needs approval from the House of Representatives and Gov. Robert Bentley. The Legislature can meet for only two more days before June 15, though there have been rumblings the session could end as early as Thursday.

Sanders said he did not have a sense of how the House might vote on the proposal. House Rules Chairman Mac McCutcheon, R-Huntsville, who sets the calendars for bills and resolutions, said the resolution would not go before the House Thursday.

"A lot of House members that have come to me about that resolution," he said. "Their comments are 'Why would we want to change a piece of history in our state?'"

Sanders said after the vote there was some debate whether to name the bridge after individuals involved in Bloody Sunday, such as longtime civil rights activist Amelia Boynton or U.S. Rep. John Lewis, D-Ga., who were both assaulted on Bloody Sunday. However, the group's feeling was that Journey to Freedom better conveyed the events that happened.

"They resolved among themselves that the bridge stood for freedom," Sanders said.

John Gainey, executive director of Students UNITE, said in a phone interview the Senate's action was "incredibly exciting."

"The movement was so much bigger than any one person that we wanted a name that could reflect the entirety of the civil rights movement," he said. "We felt Journey to Freedom Bridge would do it. That's what it is and continues to be."

In a statement, Lewis said naming the bridge was "a decision for the people of Alabama to make" and that he would accept the decision. However, Lewis said "you can change the name of the bridge but you cannot change the facts of history."

"As Americans, we need to learn the unvarnished truth about what happened in Selma during the struggle for voting rights and put all the facts on the table," the statement said. "That is the top priority, whether the name is changed or not."

Bloody Sunday and the Selma-to-Montgomery March spurred passage of the Voting Rights Act later in 1965.

Tony Harris, a spokesman for the Alabama Department of Transportation, said in an email Wednesday the department has "generally honored" resolutions renaming roads and bridges if the legislative chambers approve it and the governor signs the legislation.

The bridge was named a National Historic Landmark in 2013. Lee Sentell, director of the Alabama Department of Tourism, said renaming the bridge could jeopardize its landmark status.

"It has to be essentially unchanged from its appearance for the era in which it became significant," he said. "I'm not making a judgment on whether they should or shouldn't. I'm sure it's an emotional issue for Sen. Sanders, but there could be unintended consequences."

The bridge was named after Edmund Pettus, a Confederate general who later served in the U.S. Senate. Pettus was elected a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in 1877, at the tail end of Reconstruction, and served in the terrorist organization for at least a year. According to a 2014 Smithsonian Magazine article, Pettus campaigned for the U.S. Senate on his time in the Ku Klux Klan and his opposition to the Reconstruction amendments that granted the ballot and citizenship to freed slaves.

The article said there was no evidence that Pettus participated in racial violence, though as a KKK member he would not have opposed it. According to the Equal Justice Initiative, 25 men were lynched in Dallas County between 1877 and 1950.

Sanders said he felt Pettus' time in the KKK was enough to strike his name off the bridge.

Washington correspondent Mary Orndorff Troyan contributed to this report.