A Reflection on Selma for Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service

As a scholar of the Civil Rights Movement, I had mixed feelings as I entered the movie theater on Friday night to see Selma.

On the one hand, I am thrilled that there have been so many movies about African American history and Civil Rights released in the past 4-5 years: For Colored Girls (2010), The Butler (2013), Get On Up (2014), 42 (2013), Django Unchained (2012), Dear White People (2014), 12 Years A Slave (2013), and The Help (2011), to name a few. 

But I imagine that as you read that list, you started considering whether you liked the movies I listed, whether they really were fair to the movement or were propaganda to assuage white guilt. And I have the same mixed feelings about some of those movies. Who is their intended audience? Whose narrative is dominant, and whose voices are still silenced? Who wrote the screenplays, and in consultation with which historians and historical figures?

My particular research on Rev. Dr. Prathia Hall has led me to spend a considerable amount of time studying Selma. Originally led by Bernard Lafayette as part of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Prathia Hall became its second leader in 1963. But you might not know that from watching Selma because the focus is on Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). 

In the year leading up to the movie's release, SNCC folks have been talking a lot about it, wondering who is included, who was left out, and how the movie portrays the people and organizations involved. Some in SNCC were very upset that they were not consulted by the movie's makers, and others were upset that key people in its story - like Bernard Lafayette and Prathia Hall - were omitted. Thankfully, the movie includes local leader Amelia Boynton, but she has extremely limited dialogue.

There has also been considerable conversation about the movie's portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson, as almost an adversary of the movement or that he wanted to run the movement according to what best honored his administration's agenda. But there has always been some debate about how much Johnson supported the movement. Yes, he pushed through legislation in 1964 and 1965, but like Kennedy before him, he did not consistently enforce existing laws to protect civil rights workers. People died, because of police brutality and racist violence, on his watch. I think that the play "All the Way" (2012) is an exquisite examination of the nuances of Johnson's presidency, the various angles he was simultaneously playing, and the way the movement was both aided and hindered by him. 

But as I watched the movie, I found myself being less concerned with those issues and genuinely grateful for such a raw and graphic portrayal of the story. 

As a WASP from the South, I often hear some of the old racist lines about blaming poor people for their poverty, justifying police brutality in the name of public order, and hearing words like "justice" as the cries of a revolutionary, and they are unfortunately still going strong. And since the law has been changed significantly in recent decades, a new generation has grown up thinking that racism is solved, sexism is solved, and everyone can be whatever they want in today's world. 

But all too often, we avoid learning about things that matter because it's too painful. It's like we trick ourselves into thinking that if we just ignore it, it's like it never happened and it's like it's not really affecting us still today. I can't tell you how many times I've heard my students say that they don't want to go see (fill in the blank movie) because "it's just gonna depress me."

When we go to the movies, we typically want glitz and glam and warm fuzzies. An entertaining escape from reality. But we are being entertained to our downfall. Selma is a very entertaining movie. It is beautifully acted, with interesting and provocative music and cinematography. It incorporates historical footage seamlessly. It has action and drama and romance.

But it's so much better than that, so much richer than that. It is a movie about something. It is a movie that tells a story worth telling. 

We need movies that show the horrors of our history in plain view. We need movies that don't sugarcoat reality or pick and choose what white audiences will best like to see. We need movies that put it all out there, in our faces. We need movies that make us think and compel us to act. We need movies that stir our souls and quicken our heartbeats and empower our feet to take steps for change.

And Selma delivers. After the movie ended, I could barely get up from my seat. My mind and heart were racing, and I could barely juggle the competing desires to journal and plan how I'd get my students involved.

And even days after I've seen it, my mind keeps going back to it. The freedom singing. The tension between SCLC and SNCC and Malcolm X over the best way to move for change. (The Butler and Selma are among the best movies I've ever seen that deal with that.) The challenge of being willing to risk your life and trying to keep as many people safe as possible. The challenge of comforting those who are suffering day in and day out from the weight of oppression, but fully aware of the evils of systemic racism and its pervasive power in the American South.

These are all still issues we face today. If the images of police beating and killing innocent African American people did not conjure remembrances of Ferguson, the song in the closing credits brings it all home. Yes, the movie is about 1965, but that same brutality is still happening in 2015, largely by the same people, and they're still getting away with it. 

In fact just this week in my Christian History course, we were talking about Roman persecution of Christians. I pointed out to my students that Christians were being arrested on bogus charges and forced to show their paperwork. To be sure they caught it, I offered, "You didn't get arrested and killed because you are black. You were arrested and killed because you didn't use your turn signal at the traffic light." and "You weren't asked to show your paperwork because you are Hispanic/Black/Asian/Arabic. You were asked to show your paperwork because you were randomly selected."

Lightbulbs. They start to see how all of these issues are connected, how they continue to be major issues in our society, and how their own actions may be fueling systemic prejudices and oppression.

And then we can have a conversation about change. They have to understand what happened in order to recognize what's still happening in order to think about how to make things better. And we need strong messages in media forms they will use/watch/hear to get the point across. And we need teachers and preachers to not be afraid to bring it up.

I am grateful for Selma. It is not a perfectly accurate portrayal of what actually happened. There are people who were left out, whose roles were understated and overstated. Remember, though, that the movie is not meant to be a literal historical reenactment, but rather one perspective on a historical event.

Selma is powerful, mesmerizing, provocative, challenging, uncomfortable, tragic, and inspiring. Whereas The Help alluded to the close-range assassination of Medgar Evers in his driveway in front of his family rather than showing it, Selma puts you in the middle of the wreckage and the center of the fight. It will hurt, in a necessary way. It will anger you that news media has sheltered you from what's still happening all around you and that America is not as free as you may have thought it has always been. It will simultaneously bring you to silence and give you courage to speak truth to power.

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. National Day of Service, I challenge you to go see Selma if you have not already.Then sit down for a conversation with your church or your family or your group of friends, and talk about it. Not just lip service to what you think you should say. Have a real conversation. Say what moved you, what challenged you, what you never realized. Grieve over oppression and marginalization. Grieve that innocent people are being killed for no reason. Reflect on the role of the government and the people and the church. Confess your own fears and the steps you've been afraid to take. And then take them.

"The ultimate test of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and moments of convenience, but where he stands in moments of challenge and moments of controversy." - Martin Luther King, Jr.

Where do you stand, and what steps will you take?