'Selma' stars including Oprah march in Alabama, honoring Martin Luther King Jr

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'Selma' stars including Oprah march in Alabama, honoring MLK
KIM CHANDLER

SELMA, Ala. (AP) — Oprah Winfrey, fellow actors from the movie "Selma" and hundreds of others marched to recall one of the bloodiest chapters of the civil rights movement on Sunday, the eve of the national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.

The remembrance comes after several incidents in which unarmed black men were killed by police in recent months, spurring protests and heightening tensions around the country. In Ferguson, Mo., where one fatal shooting caused weeks of violent protests, leading black members of Congress pressed for further reforms of the criminal justice system in the name of equality.

Eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus joined U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay at Wellspring United Methodist Church in Ferguson as they took up King's legacy in light of the recent deaths.

"We need to be outraged when local law enforcement and the justice system repeatedly allow young, unarmed black men to encounter police and then wind up dead with no consequences," said Clay, a St. Louis Democrat. "Not just in Ferguson, but over and over again across this country."

In Selma, Winfrey marched with "Selma" director Ava DuVernay, actor David Oyelowo, who portrayed King in the movie, and the rapper Common. Winfrey was a producer on the film and had an acting role like Common. They marched to Selma's Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights protesters were beaten and tear-gassed in 1965.

"Every single person who was on that bridge is a hero," Winfrey told the marchers before they walked up the bridge as the sun went down over the Alabama River. Common and John Legend performed their Oscar-nominated song "Glory" from the film as marchers crested the top of the bridge amid the setting sun.

Winfrey said the marchers remember "Martin Luther King as an idea, Selma as an idea and what can happen with strategy, with discipline and with love." Winfrey played the civil rights activist Annie Lee Cooper in the movie, which was nominated for two Oscars, in categories of best picture and best original song.

"The idea is that hope and possibility is real," Winfrey said afterward of the civil rights movement in Selma. "Look at what they were able to do with so little, and look at we now how with so much. If they could do that, imagine what now can be accomplished with the opportunity through social media and connection, the opportunity through understanding that absolutely we are more alike than we are different."

"Selma" chronicled the campaign leading up to the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and the subsequent passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Law enforcement officers used clubs and tear gas on March 7, 1965 — "Bloody Sunday" — to rout marchers intent on walking some 50 miles to Montgomery, the Alabama capital, to seek the right for blacks to register to vote. A new march, led by King, started March 21 of that year and reached Montgomery days later with the crowd swelling to 25,000.

Today, the Selma bridge and adjoining downtown business district look much as they did in 1965, though many storefronts are empty and government buildings are occupied largely by African-American officials who are beneficiaries of the Voting Rights Act.

"Fifty years ago Selma made history and changed the nation," Selma Mayor George Evans said.

Onlookers in the crowd waved signs reading: "March On" and "VOTE."

Lisa Stevens brought her two children, ages 6 and 10, so they could walk the bridge that King walked. "I wanted to bring my children here so they can know their history and for them to participate in this walk," said Stevens, who moved recently from New York to Greensboro, Alabama.

"It's a part of their history and I think that they should know. Being that we're in the South now I want them to understand everything that is going on around them," she said.

McLinda Gilchrist, 63, said the movie should help a younger generation understand life for those in the 1960s who opposed racial discrimination. "They treated us worse than animals," Gilchrist said.

"It was terrifying," recalled Lynda Blackmon Lowery, who still lives in Selma and was the youngest person to march there in 1965 as a teenager. Now a 64-year-old mother and grandmother, she spoke Sunday in New York of a harrowing experience of unarmed marchers going up against rifles, billy clubs and fierce dogs of white officers. She has since written a memoir, "Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom."

Other King events planned for Monday's federal holiday include a wreath-laying in Maryland, a tribute breakfast in Boston and volunteer service activities by churches and community groups in Illinois. In South Carolina, civil rights leaders readied for their biggest rally of the year.

And in Georgia, King's legacy also was being celebrated at the church he pastored in Atlanta. The current pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, said the annual King holiday is a time when "all of God's children are busy spreading the message of freedom and justice."

In the Sunday sermon, Professor James Cone of New York's Union Theological Seminary urged Ebenezer's congregation to celebrate the slain civil rights leader "by making a political and a religious commitment to complete his work of justice." He closed the service by leading singing of the civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome."
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AP writers Verena Dobnik in New York, Alan Schere Zagier in Ferguson, Missouri, and AP Radio Religion Editor Steve Coleman in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.


-- (c) Associated Press 2015-01-19

[NeverSure]

He was a wonderful man, maybe responsible for the passage of the Civil Rights Act.

[Publicus]

The conservative reaction against the majority demographics that elected and reelected Barack Obama as the first black president will be overcome by the further development of those demographics, by which in 2008, 70 million Americans voted for Obama while the best either opponent could muster barely amounted to 60 million votes, in 2012.

The Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr took on and overcame the substantial and consistently fierce conservative opposition that followed the 1954 unanimous Supreme Court ruling that all schools be racially desegregated. Virginia, which back then defied the Court by refusing to open its schools for a new school year, has now voted twice to elect Barack Obama president, for example.

Due to the rapid demographic evolution of the United States, the country will not need another MLKing because developments will take care of themselves. Dr. King's noble and courageous life and times make possible this peaceful and natural transformation, the constant rantings and ragings of the far right notwithstanding.

For sure.

[NeverSure]

The conservative reaction against the majority demographics that elected and reelected Barack Obama as the first black president will be overcome by the further development of those demographics, by which in 2008, 70 million Americans voted for Obama while the best either opponent could muster barely amounted to 60 million votes, in 2012.

The Rev Dr Martin Luther King Jr took on and overcame the substantial and consistently fierce conservative opposition that followed the 1954 unanimous Supreme Court ruling that all schools be racially desegregated. Virginia, which back then defied the Court by refusing to open its schools for a new school year, has now voted twice to elect Barack Obama president, for example.

Due to the rapid demographic evolution of the United States, the country will not need another MLKing because developments will take care of themselves. Dr. King's noble and courageous life and times make possible this peaceful and natural transformation, the constant rantings and ragings of the far right notwithstanding.

For sure.

There are no constant "rantings and ravings" against blacks by the right unless you find some tiny, tiny fringe group which isn't respected by the right.

Things were bad for blacks before Martin Luther King and there's no doubt about it. King was a peaceful, articulate man whose following was both blacks and whites. Look at the whites in the video I posted, marching peacefully but effectively for black rights.

Please, today is a National Holiday in the US with government and most businesses closed to honor this great man. Let's not turn it into a political left/right bash about today. Today is about Martin Luther King.

Peace.

[NeverSure]

I get very emotional watching that video, and it should be watched.

While King was speaking there were still segregated schools in the South. One school for whites and another, often lesser school for blacks and it was enforced. There were restaurants and motels and rest rooms with signs "Whites Only." Blacks couldn't vote in many states. The list goes on. And on.

This happened in my lifetime and I saw it on a trip when I was 12 years old. We visited relatives in Florida. It wasn't like that where I live but then we didn't have many blacks. Even as a 12 year old I was stunned.

I believe that King more than anyone else was responsible for the Civil Rights Act in the '60's which outlawed all of that. The Federal Government sent in troops to enforce it. Now we have Affirmative Action where businesses, universities and governments have to actively seek out blacks to maintain a "quota" and that has given equal opportunity for blacks in those areas.

It's far from perfect, and even a lot of blacks have a lot of work to do because like whites, if they don't study, work hard, and keep their nose clean they'll go nowhere.

But today as we honor King, blacks have more freedom and more opportunity than they ever have had, and one is even President of The United States where 60 years ago he might not have been able to vote.

Martin Luther King lost his life to an assassin's bullet but his life wasn't in vain.

RIP.

Thank you, Mr. King.

[Publicus]

Your point is well taken because I did consider whether I should make the post I did make, which means I did conclude it is an appropriate post. Your excellent post is the neutral post that you choose it to be and good for you and for the many along with myself who appreciate the fact..

I personally saw and heard George Wallace then and I also see and hear George Wallace now, just in a different guise, and Dr King stood for and fought brilliantly to overcome all the George Wallaces which is why among many other reasons Dr King is the much honored figure of US history that he deserves to be.

We honor President Lincoln on his birthday too and the 16th president is less than a hero in some parts of the United States that he courageously sacrificed his life to preserve. The engraving over his statue in Washington, which is visible in the superb video you provided, is carefully phrased: "In This Temple, As In The Hearts Of Those For Whom He Saved The Union, The Memory Of Abraham Lincoln Is Enshrined Forever."

Kindly note the qualifier, "As in the hearts of those for whom he saved the union." The fact is Abraham Lincoln did not save the union for everyone, not does Martin Luther King speak for every single American.

Dr King speaks for you and I and for the vast majority of Americans, same as Lincoln spoke for you and I and for the vast majority of Americans, but not all or every one.

As we live in our time we do apply the deeds and lessons provided by our mentor heroes of the past, which accounts for my post to a thread about a great movie that commemorates the co-memorable. .