Let Freedom Ring - Dr. King, Gen. Pettus, and Lookout Mountain

Transcript

Transcript

Welcome to Point Park, part of Lookout Mountain Battlefield. My name is Chris Young, and I am one of Chickamauga and Chattanooga National Military Park’s interpretive park rangers.

If we keep our eyes open long enough, we just might witness certain ironies as they pertain to the historical record, and the Civil War is no exception. Last year, after presenting a program on the complexities associated with monumentation and reconciliation at the New York Peace Monument, located behind me, a participant asked if Confederate Brigadier General Edmund Pettus, whose name is etched on one of the monument’s large bronze tablets, was the same Pettus for whom the bridge in Selma, Alabama, was named. It was at that moment, I decided to develop a program that would help connect the dots between Edmund Pettus, Lookout Mountain, the bridge in Selma, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

2023 marks both the 60th anniversary of Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech and the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, one of the most iconic battles of the Civil War, often referred to as “The Battle Above the Clouds.” No one could’ve known in 1863, or for that matter, in 1963, that the stories of these prominent historical figures and their struggles to define their views of “Freedom” would intertwine on the rocky slopes of Lookout Mountain and on a metallic bridge spanning the Alabama River. On August 28, 1963, standing in the shadow cast by President Lincoln from inside his Washington, D.C. memorial, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered one of the most iconic speeches during the civil rights movement to over 250,000 supporters. The address, remembered as his “I Have a Dream” speech, reverberated across the reflection pool and immediately into history. I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today!

so let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, and when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

“Let Freedom Ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee” – It was here on November 24, 1863, that varying definitions of Freedom rang out across the mountainside as bullets zipped and whizzed, spilling the blood of soldiers on this battlefield.

At 12:30 pm, Brigadier General Edmund Pettus led three Alabama regiments of his brigade, the 20th Alabama, the 31st Alabama, and the 46th Alabama, from Lookout Mountain’s summit toward Robert Cravens’ “White House,” situated on the mountain’s terrace. Near this location, he found Brigadier General Edward Walthall’s Mississippi Brigade, exhausted from the morning’s action against the relentless US assault and in need of ammunition. Pettus relieved the beleaguered Mississippians momentarily, and he and Walthall, after returning to the fight, held their positions until after nightfall. The dense fog of the day made it almost impossible to see the opposing battlelines. Colonel Daniel Hundley, of the 31st Alabama Infantry, stated, “…the two armies confronted each other and although not over a hundred yards apart, each was totally invisible to the other. Their respective positions could only be known by the lines of fire as volley succeeded volley. The scene presented was weird and almost indescribable. The dripping leaves, the indistinct figures of men seen here and there crouching behind trees and rocks, the gleaming lines of fire as the two armies hurled volley after volley into the darkness, the rattle of the bullets above, around, everywhere….”

Beginning at 8 pm, Confederates began retiring from the mountain, heading across Chattanooga Valley, to positions along Missionary Ridge. It wasn’t until 2 am, on November 25, that the last Confederates left Lookout Mountain.

Prior to the attack, Captain John Doty of the 104th Illinois Infantry wrote his brother about Lookout Mountain. In his letter, Doty stated, “Although it is high as Goliath was above David, still he was reached.” On the morning of November 25, 1863, Captain John Wilson and others of the 8th Kentucky US Infantry crested Lookout’s summit and placed the United States flag on the mountain’s northern tip, causing a resounding cheer that reverberated around Chattanooga and through the valleys between. Goliath had been slain. In 1963, a little less than 100 years since the fog of war lifted from the slopes of Lookout Mountain, another imposing mountain was being assaulted, on which stood men and women aligned with the ideology General Pettus once followed. After the Confederacy’s demise, and Reconstruction was instituted, the South’s African American population, many now armed with the right to vote, had to be stopped from exercising that and other rights. Intimidation, through violence, came with the formation of the Ku Klux Klan. Although unlikely to ever don a robe or wield a gun during terroristic nighttime raids, Pettus supported the “cause” in other ways. Dr. Wayne Flynt, Professor Emeritus in Auburn University’s Department of History, contends, “There is really no way of excluding Edmund Pettus of responsibility from the violence. He helps organize it, he helps protect it, and he does not seek to prosecute anyone who did it.”

How did Pettus help organize and protect an organization that wreaked terror on others? He did so as Grand Dragon of the Alabama Ku Klux Klan in 1877, the last year of Reconstruction, as the chairman of the state delegation to the Democratic National Convention for two decades, and as a US Senator.

One of the places over which this new mountain was to be assailed was across the very bridge which bore the name of Edmund Pettus, one of Selma, Alabama’s most prominent citizens. When the bridge was opened, in 1940, city leaders declared it as more than “the opening of another bridge.” They said it “marks another epoch in the growth and advancement of Dallas County…. The new bridge is the answer to ‘The March of Progress.’” Yet was the bridge a symbol of the “March of Progress” or of the regression in civil rights throughout the state and the Deep South?

In 1960, Selma’s population was 29,500, of which 14,400 were White and 15,100 were African American. However, the voting rolls were 99% White and 1% African American. The discrepancy in the voting population is glaringly evident. Five years later, in 1965 and almost 100 years since the Confederacy’s surrender, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. prepared to lead a non-violent charge across Pettus’ bridge to help shine a light on the continued battle raging up the slopes of the mountain called civil rights. This particular battle, waged across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, became known as Bloody Sunday.

Today, on the 60th Anniversary of Dr. King’s speech, “Let Freedom Ring from Lookout Mounta

Description

On the 60th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech and the 160th anniversary of the Battle of Lookout Mountain, we will explore the connections these two historic anniversaries have in common.

Duration

10 minutes, 41 seconds

Credit

NPS

Date Created

08/24/2023

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