The Bloody Sunday Attack at Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, is a signature event from the Civil Rights Movement in the United States. It proved important enough to feature in a Hollywood movie, Selma, that appeared over the winter of 2014-15. While the Bloody Sunday attack at Pettus Bridge is famous, the person for whom the bridge is named is less so. Who was Edmund Pettus? Does his identity matter in 1965? Or 2022?

The Name Behind the Bloody Sunday Attack at Pettus Bridge

Edmund Pettus was a figure of some importance during the 1800s. Born in Alabama in 1821, he became a lawyer. Pettus was also a soldier, fighting in both the Mexican-American War and the Civil War. He prospected for gold in California in 1849, returning to Alabama via Panama. For the last several years of his life, he represented Alabama in the US Senate. (For more details about his life, see his entry at the Encyclopedia of Alabama.)

That’s the bland version. It’s what you might find on a plaque on a bridge named after someone. But it hides as much as it reveals.

What Did Edmund Pettus Do?

Edmund Pettus was a slaveholder and a true believer in the institution. On the eve of the Civil War, he was an active voice for secession. (His brother was governor of Mississippi. Pettus urged his brother to secede.) He was a general for the Confederacy during the war.

After the Civil War ended, Edmund Pettus was a strong voice against Reconstruction. He did all he could to keep African Americans enslaved without calling it slavery. The pinnacle of his career as a racist came in 1877. In that year Pettus became the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.

Despite this unsavory record, Pettus nearly became a judge on the US Supreme Court. He hoped for an appointment during the Grover Cleveland administration but did not get it. That spurred him to run for the US Senate, and with the help of wealthy whites and the Klan, Pettus joined the US Senate in 1896.

He was a nice fit with Alabama’s other senator, John Tyler Morgan. Morgan was also a true believer in slavery, white superiority, Providential Design, and a host of other prejudicial views. (Note that he’s named after a pro-slavery president, too.)

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Senator Edmund Pettus

Pettus’s career in the Senate mostly served to help rich men like himself. He favored the gold standard and taxation measures that benefitted men of his class. Pettus also tried to get government money for internal improvements in Alabama, like dams on rivers, that would aid his fellow rich white men trying to industrialize the state. He disliked the 17th Amendment (direct election of senators).

He had a couple decent moments, I’ll allow, like when he opposed declaration of the Spanish-American War. Pettus also chaired the Committee on Disposition of Useless Executive Papers. (It’s a real thing. I checked. It lasted 1889 to 1934, and the National Archives replaced this committee eventually.)

Why Was the Bridge Named After Edmund Pettus?

This, then, is the man the bridge over the Alabama River in Selma is named for. Construction of the bridge finished in 1940—just the right time that people still remembered Pettus’s career. Because he stood for the values of the Alabama power structure—racism and segregation mixed with industrial development and modernization—Pettus seemed the perfect man for whom to name a bridge.

Giving the bridge his name also, therefore, served to remind the African American residents of Selma which side the Alabama power structure was on—and that it wasn’t their side. In that sense, it served a similar purpose to the racist monuments erected throughout the South during the 20th century. One major purpose was to rub the inferior social status of black people in their faces every day.

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Events After the Bloody Sunday Attack at Pettus Bridge

So, the Bloody Sunday Attack at Pettus Bridge had an extra layer of symbolism in 1965. Police attacked the civil rights marchers crossing the bridge who walked in the footsteps of one of Alabama’s greatest racists.

This is also why some civil rights individuals started a movement to rename the bridge. Instead of Edmund Pettus Bridge, they’d like to see it renamed the John Lewis Bridge. Lewis was the leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee famously beaten bloody during the march. Lewis later served several terms in the US House of Representatives.

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