A petition to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge after Rep. John Lewis is gaining support.
The “John Lewis Bridge Project”, a non-profit, started the petition, which has now reached more than 400,000 signatures. The petition is addressed to Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey.
“He dedicated his life to the pursuit of unconditional love and equality for all Americans. His legacy is our legacy, his story is our story,” the Project said in part in a statement posted on their Twitter page Friday night.
“John Lewis was alive long enough to hear us start this process, unfortunately he is no longer with us and won’t see us finish this. But we will finish this,” founder of the project Michael Starr Hopkins said in an interview on MSNBC Saturday morning.
Lewis helped lead a march across the bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965. In an event widely called “Bloody Sunday,” marchers, including Lewis, were beaten by law enforcement.
The bridge’s namesake, Edmund Pettus, was a Confederate general and leader of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.