In 1965, at the height of the civil rights movement, hundreds of people gathered peacefully to protest at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama. Pettus was a former Confederate general and leader of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan. The protestors were met by the police who beat the protestors with canes and whips and released tear gas. CBS News was there to document the violence. 50 years later, CBS’s ’60 Minutes’ returns to the bridge – still named after Pettus – to interview filmmaker Ava DuVernay, who recreated the bloody demonstration for the film Selma. (The bridge crosses the Alabama River in Selma.)
On ’60 Minutes’ (February 8, 7pm), Bob Simon asks DuVernay about what it was like filming on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, DeVernay said: “I took great pleasure in directing scenes on this bridge. I imagine him [Pettus] turning over in his grave a little bit, thinking ‘where did it all go wrong?! This was not supposed to happen!’”
