As we left the theatre last evening, Diane said, “One of the great regrets of my life – that I didn’t go to Selma. I was close, too. In St. Louis (at school). Buses were leaving for Selma. I could have, should have gone.”
I have had the same regret for years.
Except that in 1965, I was in Orange County, hip-deep in sports, politically unconnected. This should not have been, but Selma was moon-distant because I was white and untroubled.
“Selma,” the motion picture, was superbly acted. Even though director Ava DuVernay clearly stated that the most important march in the history of the civil rights movement was not a documentary, it was scrupulously faithful to history, as I remember it, as I have read it.
I spent most of the two hours hunched forward as one of the two or three most meaningful political events of my lifetime played out with riveting authenticity and superb attention to subtleties.
Dr. Martin Luther King’s transcendent commitment to his people, his carefully trained mind, his inordinate restraint in the face of monsterish cruelty and bigotry, almost inhuman discipline, and brilliant eye for intricately measured drama were splendidly translated to the screen by the unknown but richly talented David Oyelowo.
I was struck profoundly by the overpowering distinction between the classy effectiveness of Dr. Kings protests compared against the markedly ineffective rowdy hoodlumism of contemporary Michael Brown-Eric Garner protests.
See “Selma” to better appreciate the most important movement in modern American history.
