Dear readers,
I saw the movie SELMA. It left me stunned. I just couldn’t let go. Yes, I was there—for the last march—the celebratory one, which may have given it extra power for me. But most of the audience seemed similarly overwhelmed. It brought back a period that is sometime hard to remember in the gut. We need that energy again to tackle the critical issues we face today.
I found, to my surprise, that the way Lyndon B. Johnson was dealt with was very positive and hardly deserving of the uproar it has caused. Goodness gracious! It shows a man with good intentions, not to be taken for granted given his background, but also a practical political mind, not eager to engage in losing battles or losing powerful allies. Is that unfair to LBJ? It is what we admire about him and probably what created King’s successful effort to get a voting bill passed. Perhaps, I am trying to recall, the movie suggests that LBJ may have sent the FBI after King—which maybe he did? Or didn’t?
But of course it gets a lot of things wrong. The SNCC leaders, who are miffed at being overwhelmed by King’s plans, were hardly children. In fact, I am reminded, they were more or less the same age as King, and it was their work made that event possible. That does not come across in the somewhat patronizing scene where King lectures them about real life. For those who probably know the story best, there were probably omissions that distort the history of the times more seriously than the way it shows LBJ.
It strikes me as odd that this is where so many critics have spent their energies. Maybe why it was easier for the Oscars to ignore the film? Yes, this is decidedly a film that “glorifies” the civil rights movement—showing it mostly at its best. (Meanwhile, millions of dollar are made by a movie that glorifies war—The Sniper.)
My thanks go out—wholeheartedly—to those who enabled me to have that renewal of hope by remembering what we once did. And must do again. We need a new voting rights act as much as we did a half century ago. Our new and “improved” system for counting votes—not to mention who gets to vote—has made a mockery of that great victory at Selma. It is past time for us to imitate the actions of those SNCC workers, and of the many heroes who made Selma and the Voting Rights Act possible.
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Deborah Meier on Education 