John Lewis, 42 years later: 'It is important to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge again'

Forty-two years after a 25-year-old activist named John Lewis led voting-rights marchers onto the Edmund Pettus Bridge outside Selma, Ala., only to be beaten and tear-gassed by state troopers on what became known as Bloody Sunday, the bridge is the scene of another kind of showdown. Today, Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are joining Lewis, now a Democratic congressman from Georgia, and thousands of participants in the annual commemoration of the march from Selma to Montgomery, which was finally completed two weeks after Bloody Sunday with the Rev. Martin Luther King.

In an interview yesterday, Lewis reflected on how history might dignify politics -- and whether politics could cheapen history.-- David Montgomery

Q. Can this annual pilgrimage to keep the memory of Bloody Sunday alive inform the political discourse of today?

A.It is important to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge again...People must never forget that 42 years ago, all across the South, people of color could not participate in the democratic process. It was very hard, almost impossible, to become a registered voter. In Selma, 2.1 percent of African Americans were registered to vote...The journey is to remind us what happened and how it happened. And to try to get the nation to take lessons from the past and build on those lessons and go forward...