Staff report

CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA. &8212; The Rev. Henry Silva, who walked the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday, died Tuesday. He was 83.

Silva served as a vice president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, joining it shortly after it was creaked in the wake of the 1955 bus boycott in Montgomery. The SCLC listed him on its Web site as regional vice president, North Atlantic Region.

He claimed to have been present at the Loraine Hotel in Memphis, Tenn., the day the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered.

Silva was a guest speaker at colleges and universities and talked about his days as a civil rights warrior, participating in nearly every event, including the March on Washington in 1963 to the 1965 Selma to Montgomery march.

J.F. Bell Funeral Home in Charlottesville is in charge of arrangements.