Edmund Pettus Bridge

A plain steel bridge over the Alabama River became one of the most sacred grounds of the civil rights movement. On March 7, 1965, marchers demanding the right to vote were clubbed and gassed here in full view of the nation's cameras. The horror of 'Bloody Sunday' galvanized America, and within months the Voting Rights Act of 1965 struck down the barriers that had disenfranchised Black citizens for generations. The bridge — named, with bitter irony, for a Confederate general and Klansman — is now a monument to the marchers who crossed it.

The Edmund Pettus Bridge opened in 1940, carrying U.S. Route 80 across the Alabama River at Selma. It was named for Edmund Winston Pettus, a Confederate brigadier general, U.S. senator, and Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. By 1965 Selma had become the center of a voting-rights campaign, where Black residents who made up half the county were almost entirely barred from registering to vote.

On Sunday, March 7, 1965, some 600 marchers set out from Selma toward the state capital in Montgomery. As they crossed the bridge, Alabama state troopers and a mounted posse attacked them with clubs, whips, and tear gas. Young activist John Lewis suffered a fractured skull. Television footage of the beatings — remembered as 'Bloody Sunday' — aired across the country and stunned the conscience of the nation.

Two days later Martin Luther King Jr. led a symbolic 'turnaround' march to the bridge. Finally, under federal court protection and the guard of U.S. Army troops, thousands completed the 54-mile march from Selma to Montgomery on March 21–25, 1965. The pressure was decisive: President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that August. The bridge was designated a National Historic Landmark in 2013 and anchors the Selma to Montgomery National Historic Trail.