John Lewis’ legacy shaped in 1965 on ‘Bloody Sunday’

SELMA, Ala. (AP) — John Lewis saw the line of Alabama state troopers a few hundred yards away as he led hundreds of marchers to the apex of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma on March 7, 1965. Armed with gas canisters and nightsticks, the troopers were flanked by horse-riding members of the sheriff’s posse. A crowd of whites milled around nearby.

Lewis, who died Friday at age 80, was just 25 at the time. He had been leading voting rights demonstrations for months in the notoriously racist town, and he and the others were trying to take a message of freedom to segregationist Gov. George C. Wallace in Montgomery.