SELMA, Ala. — It dominates the view today, as it did 50 years ago, a bridge named for a Confederate general and reputed Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan, Edmund Pettus. It would have remained just another span in a sleepy Southern river town had fate not put it at the center of an epic struggle by ordinary people who tried to march peacefully for the right to vote, something most of us took for granted.That’s certainly true for me, growing up next door in Georgia on what has become known as Bloody Sunday. Raw brutality by state troopers coming across the TV news in stark black and white was so shocking it dwells in my mind’s eye still. How could that happen in this country?Less than 10 years later, I was working for the Associated Press in Alabama alongside reporters who covered that and subsequent less hazardous marches. Later in Atlanta, I became friends with John Lewis, the man nearly beaten to death as he led the peaceful protesters. He went on to be an Atlanta City Council member, U.S. congressman and civil rights legend, the only surviving speaker from the Washington rally where the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech.Over the years I have reminded Lewis, who just turned 75, one of my life’s goals is to walk across that bridge with him. Can’t make the 50th anniversary this week as President Obama will, but I did slip into Selma recently. Physically, it hasn’t changed much, just a small town with some interesting architecture nobody would know were it not for an awful incident.Excuse me,” a man said to me as he walked across the bridge. “Could you take a picture of me and my son?” He was retired military, now living in North Carolina. This was his first visit. He was born the year the march across the bridge put this place on the map. His son just graduated from college.
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