“When your children shall ask you in time to come, saying, what mean these twelve stones, then you shall tell them how you made it over.” Joshua 4: 21-22
The verse inscribed on this stone monument near the Edmund Pettus Bridge refers the Israelites erecting a monument of 12 stones, placed in a circle in the place where the heads of each tribe stood at the meeting that the twelve tribes had with Joshua as their leader immediately following the crossing of the Jordan River into the land of Israel. It became a traditional way to mark an important event.
These stones commemorate the crossing of the Alabama River via the Edmund Pettus Bridge on March 21, 1965. It was installed by the Voting Rights Museum in 2000.