On Sunday, CBS’s Face the Nation discussed the upcoming 50th anniversary of “Bloody Sunday” in which civil rights activists attempted to march 54-miles across Alabama in demand of voting rights but were met with a violent police response as they attempted to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma.
During the discussion, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg strangely invoked the naming of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, to the Washington Redskins and that “it is remarkable we’re having a debate in this city about the name of the Washington football team. But when you go to the south and you find that on bridges and highways you have the names still of grand dragons of the Ku Klux Klan.”
The discussion began with Sherrilyn Ifill of the liberal NAACP Legal Defense Fund noting that Edmund Pettus was "a senator. He was a confederate general and he later led the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama." The segment then turned to CBS reporter Jan Crawford who invoked the current controversy over gay marriage in Alabama as a comparison to the civil rights era:
But yet as we have seen on a number of civil rights issues it’s whether race, same-sex marriage, there still is a long way to go. But you also see in Alabama, and I have been there a couple of times in the last week, for example with the same-sex marriage controversy, you see great hope, you see people looking to advance change in the state of Alabama, as you see across the nation. So while we have people sacrificing 50 years ago I think we still have that today. Not only in Alabama, but across the country.
The discussion then turned to a recent speech by FBI Director James Comey in which he discussed the systemic disconnect that exists between law enforcement and minority communities, which the entire panel agreed was an historic statement from the head of the FBI.
The segment concluded however with Jeffrey Goldberg’s bizarre reference between the debate over the name of the Redskins and how parts of the south still have landmarks named after members of the confederacy, and in the case of Edmund Pettus, the Ku Klux Klan:
Just a very quick point on your Edmund Pettus point it is remarkable that we’re having a debate in this city about the name of the Washington football team. But when you go to the south and you find that on bridges and highways you have the names still of grand dragons of the Ku Klux Klan, that's a remarkable thing. I find that remarkable.
See relevant transcript below.
CBS’s Face the Nation
February 15, 2015
BOB SCHIEFFER: I want to talk a little bit about civil rights and where we are on that. And I would just start by asking the panel, you saw the Edmund Pettus Bridge, it’s become kind of an icon in its own way in the whole civil rights movement. Does anybody here know who Edmond Pettus is?
SHERRILYN IFILL: Yes. He was a senator. He was a confederate general and he later led the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama.
SCHIEFFER: He was the Grand Dragon.
IFILL: Yes, he was.
SCHIEFFER: Of the Ku Klux Klan in Alabama. Some of the things you don't know until you go to the south -- I had no idea –
JEFFREY GOLDBERG: Is it marked? Does it say that?
SCHIEFFER: That’s his name right across the top.
GOLDBERG: But does it acknowledge anywhere—
SCHIEFFER: It just says Edmund Pettus but it is one of those things that’s up there and down through the years I think people had just forgotten.
IFILL: Well, everybody there knows.
SCHIEFFER: That's what I found out. Which shows why you ought to go where something is happening as a journalist to find out. Where are we right now? Jan, you of course are a native of Alabama, is Alabama different than it used to be?
JAN CRAWFORD: Oh, completely. And I thought, you know, as Congressman Lewis said in your interview we can't lose sight of the fact of how much it has changed because that does a disservice when you think about how much people before us sacrificed for that change. But yet as we have seen on a number of civil rights issues it’s whether race, same-sex marriage, there still is a long way to go.
But you also see in Alabama, and I have been there a couple of times in the last week, for example with the same-sex marriage controversy, you see great hope, you see people looking to advance change in the state of Alabama, as you see across the nation. So while we have people sacrificing 50 years ago I think we still have that today. Not only in Alabama, but across the country.
--
GOLDBERG: On the other hand, just a very quick point on your Edmund Pettus point it is remarkable that we’re having a debate in this city about the name of the Washington football team. But when you go to the south and you find that on bridges and highways you have the names still of grand dragons of the Ku Klux Klan, that's a remarkable thing. I find that remarkable.
