Edmund Winston Pettus was a lawyer and politician who represented Alabama in the United States Senate from 1897 to 1907. He served as a senior officer of the Confederate States Army, commanding infantry in the Western Theater of the American Civil War. After the war, he was Grand Dragon, or supreme leader of the Ku Klux Klan, that terrorized and often killed African-Americans.
Pettus in 1899
Pettus in uniform, ca. 1863
The Edmund Pettus Bridge carries U.S. Route 80 Business across the Alabama River in Selma, Alabama. Built in 1940, it is named after Edmund Pettus, a former Confederate brigadier general, U.S. senator, and state-level leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. The bridge is a steel through arch bridge with a central span of 250 feet (76 m). Nine large concrete arches support the bridge and roadway on the east side.
The central span of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in April 2010
Looking north toward Selma, Alabama police prepare to confront peaceful demonstrators at the Edmund Pettus Bridge during Bloody Sunday in 1965.
President Obama, congressman John Lewis, former President George W. Bush, and Civil Rights Movement veterans and other commemoration attendees marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in March, 2015
The bridge in May 2017
