Calls for Selma Bridge to be renamed as John Lewis grow after his death

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• An online petition that seeks to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to civil rights icon John Lewis, has reached over 450,000 signatures as of Sunday.
• Lewis, a former representative, and civil rights leader, succumbed to pancreatic cancer on Friday. His death triggered the calls to rename the bridge after him.
• Numerous prominent individuals backed the petition while some civil rights activists have been skeptical over the proposed renaming.

An online petition that seeks to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama to late Georgia representative John Lewis has been signed by over 460,000 people as of Sunday. The bridge was known to be the place where police brutally beat civil rights advocates in 1965.

During a civil rights march on March 7, 1965, Lewis led hundreds of activists across the Selma bridge where the police manhandled them that resulted in a fatal encounter that was infamously called the “Bloody Sunday.”

The death of Lewis, who succumbed to pancreatic cancer on Friday, further reinforced the calls to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Pettus was a confederate general and Ku Klux Klan leader who supported racism and slavery. Political strategist Michael Starr Hopkins called him a “bitter racist, undeserving of the honor bestowed upon him.”

Launched in June, the John Lewis Bridge Project seeks to rename the bridge after the civil rights champion and to abolish “other existing signs of the Confederacy.”

Hopkins, who spearheaded the project, said in a statement: “It’s far past time to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge after Rep. John Lewis, a civil rights icon that nearly gave his life on that bridge.”

“As we wipe away this country’s long stain of bigotry, we must also wipe away the names of men like Edmund Pettus,” he added.

Numerous prominent people, including the 2014 film “Selma” Director Ava DuVernay, have signed the petition. The movie, which focused on the civil rights marches in Alabama, was nominated in Oscars.

In an interview with NBC’s Meet the Press, South Carolina Representative Jim Clyburn also supported the call to rename the bridge. “I think you ought to take a nice picture of that bridge with Pettus’ name on it, put it in a museum somewhere dedicated to the Confederacy, and then rename that bridge and repaint it, redecorate it: the John R. Lewis Bridge,” Clyburn said.

However, some Selma residents who also happened to be civil rights activists expressed their doubts over the renaming of the bridge. 

Alabama Representative Terri Sewell told The New York Times: “As a daughter of Selma, I understand the complexities surrounding the renaming of the bridge… And while I personally can think of no better name than that of John Lewis, I ultimately believe the Selma community should decide who it is named after.”

In 2015, a resolution to rename the bridge was turned down in the Alabama House of Representatives.

The bridge’s renaming petition had gathered more than 460,000 online signatures as of Sunday afternoon, which was over 50,000 signatures higher than Saturday.

Source: AOL.com