Edmund Pettus Bridge -- Selma AL
N 32° 24.342 W 087° 01.121
16S E 498243 N 3585406
The Edmund Pettus Bridge is located on the Selma to Montgomery NHT, which has been designated a Scenic Byway
Waymark Code: WMWG99
Location: Alabama, United States
Date Posted: 09/01/2017
Views: 3
After "Bloody Sunday," nonviolent marchers including Dr Martin Luther King marched from the Brown Chapel AME Church, through downtown Selma, over the Edmund Pettus Bridge (named for a CSA General and KKK Grand Dragon), and all the way to Montgomery.
Martin Luther King was intimately involved in and a major participant in the Selma to Montgomery March, conceived of by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and local pastors to protest Jim Crow-era suppression of their civil rights. The marchers were brutally attacked on "Bloody Sunday" after crossing the Edmind Pettus Bridge, a seminal event of the Civil Rights era that led directly to the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
From America's Scenis Byways: (
visit link)
"Selma to Montgomery March Byway
54 miles - Take one hour to drive or one day to experience the byway.
Journey through history along the trail that marks one of the major historic events in 20th-century American history, the 1965 Selma to Montgomery March, led by Martin Luther King, Jr. Wind through the streets of Selma; pass through countryside where marchers spent the night on their way to Montgomery."