Edmond Pettus was born #OTD in 1821 in Limestone County, Alabama. He served as an officer in the Confederate Army and as a US senator after the War. He was also active in the Ku Klux Klan, serving as its Grand Dragon in Alabama. He is the namesake of the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Born into an enslaving family, Pettus built a successful law career before enlisting in the Confederate Army when war broke out. While most of his home region of northern Alabama did not support secession, Pettus did. He was a pro-slavery ideologue steered by white supremacy.
During the War he rose to the rank of Brig. General and was captured as a POW three times. He was pardoned by Andrew Johnson on October 30, 1865. Pettus returned to Selma after the War and resumed his law practice.
He was also active in Reconstruction politics and was a member of the Ku Klux Klan, the paramilitary arm of the Democratic Party, the party of white supremacy at the time. He was named a Grand Wizard of the Klan in 1877.
He was elected to the US Senate in 1896 by pandering to white racial animosity in Alabama. Pettus died in Hot Springs, North Carolina in 1907.
On March 7, 1965, peaceful Black protestors were viciously attacked by police after crossing the bridge that bares Edmund Pettus' name while advocating for voting rights. The attack became one of the most infamous moments of the African American Freedom Struggle.
Nearly 100 years after the Civil War ended and almost 60 years after he died, Edmund Pettus' name was again directly associated with violence that targeted Black Alabamans. His name and legacy were as inseparable to white supremacy as the man himself.
For decades, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been whittled down to a splinter of what it once was, a process Pettus would have no doubt supported.
Before his death, Civil Rights icon and Alabama Senator John Lewis, who marched and was beaten on Bloody Sunday, introduced the The John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act of 2021 in an attempt to reinforce the 1965 VRA. It remains stalled in the Senate.
Although there have been calls to rename the Edmund Pettus Bridge to honor the late John Lewis, the bridge still dons Pettus' name.

#TheCivilWarDoc #onthisday #onthisdayinhistory #TodayinHistory #BloodySunday #CivilRights #VotingRights #VotingRightsAct #JohnLewis
Please consider donating to our project! All the money goes to our pay our research assistants. gofund.me/fa492df5
Error check. Rep. John Lewis served in the US House of Representatives, not the Senate. Apologies!

• • •

Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh
 

Keep Current with TheCivilWarDoc

TheCivilWarDoc Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

PDF

Twitter may remove this content at anytime! Save it as PDF for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video
  1. Follow @ThreadReaderApp to mention us!

  2. From a Twitter thread mention us with a keyword "unroll"
@threadreaderapp unroll

Practice here first or read more on our help page!

More from @TheCivilWarDoc1

Jul 5
We at The Civil War and the Fight for the Soul of America seek to educate people about the REAL history of the mid-nineteenth century and the Civil War, through the film itself, public history, and social media. We need your help to continue with this vitally important project!
For far too long our history has been white-washed, made to fit a Lost Cause narrative. The North may have won the Civil War, but the white South won the cultural war - a crisis that continues to plague America today.
We have set up a @gofundme page to aid fundraising efforts with a goal of $23,000!

With your donation you create jobs for M.A. and Ph.D.-level historians to work as research assistants: every single dime goes to paying them!

You can find our page here: gofund.me/fa492df5
Read 10 tweets
Jul 5
#OTD in 1852 Frederick Douglass recited "What to the Slave Is the Fourth of July?" before the Rochester Ladies' Anti-Slavery Society at Corinthian Hall. Douglass attacked slavery by highlighting how white Americans could celebrate freedom while enslaving others.
Douglass referenced the Bible, Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution to argue that as long as slavery existed that Independence Day would be a day of mourning for African Americans, especially the enslaved.
He proclaimed "...justice, liberty, prosperity and independence, bequeathed by your fathers, is shared by you, not by me. The sunlight that brought light and healing to you, has brought stripes and death to me. This Fourth July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn.”
Read 6 tweets
Jul 4
#OTD in history Union General U. S Grant defeated confederate forces at Vicksburg, dealing a huge blow to the Confederacy by gaining control of the Mississippi River. Confederates we also defeated at Ft. Helena and Robert E. Lee began his retreat from Pennsylvania.
Regiments of the United Stares Colored Troops played a pivotal role in the Union victory at Ft. Helena in particular. With control of Vicksburg and Ft. Helena, the Union Army gained control of the strategically important Mississippi River.
Confederate President Jefferson Davis claimed that Vicksburg was “the nailhead that held the South’s two halves together.” Union control of Vicksburg splintered off Louisiana, Arkansas, and Texas from the rest of the Confederacy.
Read 4 tweets
Jul 3
The Battle of Gettysburg ended #OTD in 1863 halting Confederate General Robert E. Lee's second invasion of the North. There were 51,112 casualties at Gettysburg, more than any battle during the Civil War. Check out our 🧵 about General Meade here:
The battle effectively ended after Pickett's Charge, a full frontal Confederate assault on the Union's strongest position on Cemetery Hill. Lee was forced to retreat back to Virginia and abandon planes to attack Washington via Pennsylvania. Image
Approximately 12,500 men participated in Picket's Charge. Of those, almost 60% became casualties during the assault.
Read 4 tweets
May 13
#OTD in 1862 Newton Knight reenlisted in the Confederate Army after being on furlough. He originally enlisted in July of 1861. He deserted in October of 1862 and headed home after he received word the Confederate Army had taken his family's horses for the war effort.
There is much debate and mystery surrounding Knight, his actions during and after the war, and what motivated him. However, Knight's life provides insight into conflicting ideas of race, class, and politics in Mississippi and the South writ large during the Civil War.
Knight was a yeoman farmer in Jones County, Mississippi when the war broke out. According to historian @vikki_bynum, only 12% of the county's population was Black and most whites were subsistence farmers like Knight.
Read 13 tweets
May 12
The Battle of Palmito Ranch was fought in Texas #OTD in 1865. The Confederate victory is widely considered the last battle of the Civil War. The battle occurred over one month after Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox and two days after Jefferson Davis was captured. Image
Both sides knew the war was virtually over, but a small contingent of Confederate forces refused to surrender near Brownsville, Texas. Many of the men serving under the Union Army there were members of the United States Colored Troops.
A fragile cease fire had been agreed to between the two sides on May 11. However, Confederate Lt. Gen. Edmund Smith of the Trans-Mississippi Department refused to accept the inevitable end of the war.
Read 6 tweets

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3/month or $30/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Don't want to be a Premium member but still want to support us?

Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal

Or Donate anonymously using crypto!

Ethereum

0xfe58350B80634f60Fa6Dc149a72b4DFbc17D341E copy

Bitcoin

3ATGMxNzCUFzxpMCHL5sWSt4DVtS8UqXpi copy

Thank you for your support!

Follow Us on Twitter!

:(