Selma

Just in from seeing the movie. As I watched it very closely and very deeply having lived during that time and remember it vividly my junior year in high school and shortly after returning from playing in Alabama State Basketball Tournament at the University of Alabama; another hot spot of the era, I found myself leaning toward the skeptical side of what I was about to see on the screen.  I had seen the many interviews of the main players over the last several months and chose to not see it until the dust and luster cleared thus not getting caught up in the emotion of the cameras.  I have walked across the Pettus Bridge, viewed the Alabama River, walked the streets of Selma near the Bridge in about 1980.  The sense of the spirits of The March was still very evident to me then and that same spirit was triggered in watching this movie.

 

As a Southern man having grown up in Alabama in the era of the dogs, marches, bombs, killings and names made famous such as Wallace, Connor, Clark, Johnson, etc still ring in my head. Seeing these names and many others brought to life on the screen triggered my mind in many directions knowing what I was seeing was more accurate than not.   To realize only less than a year ago that the major issue brewing the discontent in the South and Alabama in particular was the inability of blacks to vote was alarming to me in that realization.  Many of us, most probably, in our teens, had no clue about the backdrop of the issues blacks faced. Yes, I remember well the Colored and White fountains, bathrooms, back entrances to doctors' offices; and it was just the normal culture in which we all lived.  Experiencing the desegregation processes triggered by the infamous Judge Frank M. Johnson and his orders are remembered in retrospect as strange, upsetting and probably wrong, then! The memories are so very clear and after watching this movie, so very more wrong.

 

Having seen and experienced years later similar cultural activities in South Africa, I was reminded of how cultural bonds are so strong and impregnable when change is introduced. The movie has touched me deeply and feel it should be required viewing for every student in our schools today for those same actions that were normal can be ushered back to reality if left unchecked in the march of time.  Cultures do that so the key point of my blog tonight while the movie is still fresh is about the power of culture.

 

We live in very troubled times on a scale I cannot recall in my lifetime.  And I have this overwhelming sense that the times will worsen and become more threatening in the years ahead. I will add as I have written before that the fires beneath the cauldron of racism in our nation are being stoked by the White House and the media machine.  I have tired to watching TV news which I love to see for the blatantly inflammatory nature of cable news is terrible.  Police have now become the enemy and it seems they must patrol the streets of Khe Sahn in 1968 with everybody take shots at them. I do not defend murder or police brutality or heavy handedness but I worry about our police being sauteed in the fires of racism.  I cannot believe MLK wished for and worked for what we are witnessing today; certainly hope not for I want to hold him in high regard of history with an eye toward the future.  

 

The movie is eye opening and heart stopping and very well made.  The depiction of Gov Wallace whom I met on four occasions is probably more right than wrong as it that of POTUS Johnson; a master politician.  Change comes slowly and when a paradigm shift is made, EVERYTHING is and was that seemed right is changed forever.  This movie and this era was about a human paradigm shift and that change is still being crafted into the human genome I believe.

 

There is much more I could write but will stop with the fact that we have come a great distance but there is a great distance yet to trod but we must never cease the journey.  Having an African grand daughter I have grown to love with all my heart resides central to my thesis. When I kiss her, hold her, play with her, goose her, watch her learn and grow and touch so many people in so many ways, I realize racism is truly for the ignorant. That will offend some I am sure but I am no stranger to offending if my words come from my heart and these do!