Great-great-granddaughter of Edmund Pettus wants bridge renamed

MONTGOMERY, Ala. (WSFA) – As late civil rights leader and Georgia Congressman John Lewis was honored in Alabama with a last trip over the Edmund Pettus Bridge, the great-great-granddaughter of a Confederate general it was named for had something to say.

She supports renaming the bridge for Lewis.

A movement has called for a renaming of many monuments and structures honoring Confederate soldiers and generals, including the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

Some people have opposed that.

Not Caroline Randall Williams, great-great-granddaughter of Pettus, who released a statement Sunday regarding the push to rename the bridge:

“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. We need to rename the bridge because we need to honor an American hero, a man who made that bridge a place worth remembering. John Lewis secured that bridge’s place on the right side of history. We are not a people that were made to cling to relics of the past at the cost of our hope for the future. Renaming the bridge in John Lewis’s honor would be a testament to the capacity for progress, the right-mindedness and striving toward freedom that are at the heart of what’s best about the American spirit.”

Navy Vet

Article URL : https://www.wrdw.com/2020/07/27/great-great-granddaughter-of-edmund-pettus-wants-bridge-renamed/