Civil rights icon John Lewis will be remembered on Sunday (July 26) with a procession that will cross Edmund Pettus Bridge, the infamous site of Bloody Sunday where he, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and hundreds of other activists, who were protesting African-Americans voting rights and marching from Selma to the state capital of Montgomery, were brutally beaten by Alabama State Troopers in 1965.
The public event began at Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church and ended after the bridge crossing. Since Lewis’ death, an online petition asking for the bridge to be renamed after him has gained momentum, because in 2020 naming a bridge after an activist and U.S. Congressman is a better choice than a former Confederate soldier/Grand Dragon of the KKK.