Ava DuVernay backs Selma bridge renaming petition

Ava DuVernay has thrown her support behind a new campaign to rename a famous bridge featured in her 2014 movie Selma after civil rights activist and politician John Lewis.

The U.S. Representative marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama alongside Martin Luther King, Jr. back in 1965, when their peaceful protest to demand African-American voting rights was met by police officers, who brutally beat the demonstrators on what became known as Bloody Sunday.

Now the name of the bridge itself has come under scrutiny amid the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, seeking an end to racial injustice and inequality, as Senator Pettus was an officer in the Confederate Army and a leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

A Change.org petition has been launched online seeking to scrub Pettus' name off the civil rights landmark, and have it renamed in honour of Lewis, who was born in Alabama.

"I've just signed a petition about this bridge to dignity as seen in SELMA," DuVernay wrote on Twitter, as she shared a link to the campaign. "It is named after a KKK grand wizard and confederate warlord. Edmund Pettus Bridge should be the John Lewis Bridge. Named for a hero. Not a murderer. Join this call. It's past due."

Almost 108,000 people, including actor Alec Baldwin, have added their names to the list, which is addressed to Alabama Governor Kay Ivey.