Edmund Pettus

Edmund Winston Pettus (July 6, 1821 – July 27, 1907) was an American lawyer, politician and military officer 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, which terrorized and often killed African Americans.

A bridge across the Alabama River in Selma, built in 1940, was named after him. According to Smithsonian, "The bridge was named for him, in part, to memorialize his history, of restraining and imprisoning African Americans in their quest for freedom after the Civil War". He was the youngest of nine children of John Pettus and Alice Taylor Winston, a brother of John J. Pettus, and a distant cousin of Jefferson Davis. Pettus was educated in local public schools, and later graduated from Clinton College located in Smith County, Tennessee.

Pettus then studied law under William Cooper in Tuscumbia, Alabama and was admitted to the bar in 1842. Shortly afterward, he settled in Gainesville and began practicing as a lawyer. On June 27, 1844, Pettus married Mary L. Chapman, with whom he had three sons, two of whom died in infancy, and two daughters.

During the Mexican–American War in 1846–48, Pettus served as a lieutenant with the Alabama Volunteers, and after the end of hostilities he moved to California.

By 1853, he returned to Alabama, serving again in the seventh circuit as solicitor. He was appointed a judge in that circuit in 1855 until resigning in 1858. Pettus then relocated to the now extinct town of Cahaba

American Civil War

In 1861, Pettus, an enthusiastic champion of the Confederate cause and of slavery, was a Democratic Party delegate to the secession convention in Mississippi, where his brother John was serving as governor. Pettus helped organize the 20th Alabama Infantry, and was elected as one of its first officers. and on November 3 he was given brigade command in the Army of Tennessee.

Pettus and his command took part in the 1864 Atlanta Campaign, fighting in the battles of Kennesaw Mountain on June 27, Atlanta on July 22, and Jonesborough from August 31 to September 1. During the 1865 Campaign of the Carolinas, Pettus was sent to defend Columbia, South Carolina, and fought at Bentonville from March 19–21.

In 2020, Pettus’ great-great-granddaughter Caroline Randall Williams, Vanderbilt University writer-in-residence, proposed renaming the bridge after John Lewis because "We name things after honorable Americans to commemorate their legacies. That bridge is named after a treasonous American who cultivated and prospered from systems of degradation and oppression before and after the Civil War."

Writing in the New York Times, Williams argued:

At least one other Pettus descendant, Dave Pettus, supports renaming the bridge "Bloody Sunday Bridge."