This story needed to be told in this medium.
This story needed to be told.
I saw Selma today, on the first day of its wide release, needing to see it alone. I knew I could not tolerate seeing this film with anyone who cannot even try to understand the issues of voter disenfranchisement or who thinks issues of civil rights are far behind us or who is a person who, when I said I visited Montgomery, Alabama and simply had to then drive to Selma, even if my direction was reversed, who looked at me, puzzled, and asked, “Why Selma, Alabama?”
I did visit Selma, and a piece of me stayed there. And a piece of it lives on within me. Fed by that, my thoughts here are personal, yes as with all of my thoughts about movies. But this is different.
I’m writing shortly after seeing the film, this one not simmering inside while I sort things through as I often do. Instead, I’m just writing. Exhausted after the movie, but hopeful, as ever-an-optimist I must remain, for humanity to grow. We still must grow.
Selma.
This story needed to be told.
But first, another story . . .
Summer 2009 I took a road trip to Texas from Florida. I didn’t take I-10. I drove instead through Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Oklahoma to get there. I had two reasons for my route, neither of which will surprise those who know me well. First, I stopped at every Flying Saucer Draught Emporium along the way that I could fit into my map. (It’s a place that specializes in beer, originating in Fort Worth, Texas, focusing on beer before craft beers were “the thing.” (I’ve been to almost all their locations—about 100 pictures are in an album somewhere on my Facebook.)) Second, I visited numerous sites pertinent to our nation’s history of struggles for civil rights.
(I know—-these things have nothing to do with each other, and I didn’t even drink a beer at the movies today, so there remains no tie between the two.)
See, in Spring 2008, I lived in Memphis Tennessee. And although I’d tried to go to a particular museum with others, it never worked out, so I found myself touring the Civil Rights Museum, built at the Lorraine Motel (the location where Dr. Marin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated), by myself. And alone was the perfect way to experience that museum. I spent several hours there, walking through, reading every sign and taking in every exhibit. I wept the better part of that afternoon during that visit, tears slowly streaming down my face, leaving streaks of wetness that stayed glistening on my cheeks as I wondered through.
I wept for the utter shame that is our nation’s history. I wept for the failure of people to understand the horrific maltreatment of humans. I wept for the lives lost in the necessary fights for basic rights. Civil rights. Human rights. I wept for joy for those brave enough to ride the buses, to march, to join. But to be beaten, to die. And to overcome. I wept too for the absolute failure of my education system for not teaching me enough about this scar in our past—a scar that we can learn from only if we know about it. And talk about it. And don’t hide from it.
And so the following summer, I stopped first in Montgomery Alabama and toured the Rosa Parks Museum. (And I had a beer (or two) at the Montgomery Brewing Company.) The next day I re-mapped my route to take me through Selma. I walked through the Voting Rights Museum. I read and I learned and I saw things in a light I had not before.
Then I walked across the Edmund Pettus Bridge.
And I cried.
Nothing could have prepared me for the assault on my emotions that walk took. No words could have conveyed to me the blindness one has, cresting that bridge. I’d seen pictures of it (in those *tiny* little blurbs in history books). But no pictures captured that quiet, with the wind blowing over the bridge, with the Alabama River flowing below, with the birds providing the soundtrack overhead . . . .and the violence and blood that waited on the other side, unable to be seen until you crested the top.
Like I said, a piece of me stayed there. And I carry a piece of that walk with me always.
This story needed to be told.
Having just seen Unbroken, and being frustrated with a movie trying to do too much for a man’s life, Selma gets it right. Selma gets it so right. Selma gets it.
Yes, this is a movie that highlights Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., but it’s not a biopic. It’s a sliver of his life. It’s a slice of what he did for the civil rights movement but more specifically, the Voting Rights Act. And it’s told in a beautiful, tragic, and powerfully moving way.
To say that one has a right to vote is not to say one is allowed to vote. Taxes. Vouchers. Tests. Access. ID Cards. Address change complications. Signatures scrutinized only for *some* people. These were vehicles to suppress a vote. These were vehicles to disallow a vote from counting. These were. These are.
The film makes its point about these vehicles from the opening scenes. The film is powerful and makes its statements loudly and with force. But the film doesn’t fake these things. The difference is that if you’re watching the film, you cannot stick your head in the sand and pretend these things are just words in a book. Bombs don’t exaggerate.
This story needed to be told.
The cast is perfect. The acting is spot on. The emotions captured live on every face on the screen. Every tear shed. Every squaring of the shoulders with strength and pride and determination. Every drop of blood.
I cried hard, and I wept softly. I held my breath, and I shook my head in despair. I ached with the phantom pain caused by every billystick and barb-wire-wrapped club used to beat people. I flinched as the beatings played out. And I felt hopeless knowing that fifty years later, we still have so many issues, based so much in ignorance and hate, and sometimes even worse, apathy.
I clung to the scenes with John Lewis, relishing seeing this man as a young man, seeing how things have structured his growth and his life and his viewpoints. I leaned forward, seeing Dr. King’s life in a different way than we’ve seen before, a personal side and a worried side and an unsure side. I soaked up as much as I could with the nuances of conversations and how things went just as they did. How things could have been different. How things could have completely and so utterly derailed so easily. How fragile the battle was.
And I was disgusted, yet again, with political swaps and deals.
The movie helps set our stage of the past fifty years, but it also spotlights how little things have changed with too many people even in fifty years. Ignorance still smudges and smears the lenses through which too many people see the world. Hate still lingers in the shadows and sometimes walks out in the sunlight. And the disinterest lives in issues that profoundly impact our relationships and culture and politics. That disinterest festers and turns into an infection in our society. We are not post-racial. We are not where we were. But we are not where we need to be.
As always this time of year, movies are grand. Selma is more than that. Selma is exceptional.
Selma is a story that needed to be told.