Lynda Lowery was just 14 when she was one of hundreds of civil rights marchers beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7,1965,…
Lynda Lowery was just 14 when she was one of hundreds of civil rights marchers beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 7,1965, an event forever known as Bloody Sunday. She got seven stitches over her right eye, and 28 on the back of her head.
The memories of the emergency room — the needle; a nurse telling her many of the injured were treated without anesthesia — have only come back to her recently.
“After all these years, the bridge, Bloody Sunday and so forth brings back bad memories,” Lowery, a Selma resident, said in a phone interview on Saturday.
Lowery wept Friday evening on learning of the death of U. S. Rep. John Lewis, whose skull was cracked on the bridge that day. But she opposes efforts to name the bridge after him.
“I left my blood and tears in the cement of that bridge,” she said. “So did John. So did a lot of other people… if we’re going to try to fix things that are broken, then fix the things that are broken.”
Lewis’ death brought new attention to efforts to rename the Selma bridge that was the stage for a terrifying turning point in the civil rights movement. But leaders of those efforts have stressed that any decision to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge, named for a Confederate general, need to be left to the people of Selma.
“We’re working with the community on the ground to foster discussion,” said Michael Starr Hopkins, a political consultant who organized a recent petition drive to place Lewis’ name on the bridge. “At the end of the day, this effort has to be led by people on the ground.”
Calls to rename the bridge have echoed for many years. In 2015, the Alabama Senate approved a resolution from then-Sen. Hank Sanders, D-Selma, calling for the bridge to be named the “Journey to Freedom Bridge.” The House did not take up the measure.
The calls became stronger following the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers in late May, a death that led to widespread discussions of systemic racism and renewed efforts to take down monuments to the Confederacy, a racist government.
