Selma Movie Guide

 

printable version here

Location 

Selma, Alabama march to Montgomery (state capital): five days, 50 miles.

Washington, DC: US Capital where the House and Senate vote on new laws, President rejects or approves.

Characters 

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.: Baptist pastor and civil rights activist. Powerful speaker and strategic leader of the civil rights movement. His team of clergy and others made up the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). They selected issues and planned marches, protests, boycotts.

Coretta Scott King: Martin’s wife. This movie downplays her activism and role in the Civil Rights movement. Raised their four children who are all activists today. Coretta is used in this movie to show King’s imperfections, and the problems of having a single hero leader.

John Lewis: student activist with The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). later served in the House 33 years. Passed away in 2020.

President Lyndon B Johnson: is pressured by King’s fame and growing popularity to pass civil rights laws.

Malcolm X: radical activist, considered to be the scary alternative to King’s peaceful protest. But, they agreed more than they disagreed. Muslim minister, assassinated in 1965.

J Edgar Hoover: ran the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Spies on King, tries to discredit him.

Sheriff Jim Clark: of Selma, bully. an elected county official. 

Governor George Wallace: of Alabama, complains that black people always want more. Makes excuses and won’t take responsibility. 

White Clergy: Christian pastors and Jewish rabbis, Catholic nuns and more join in support. But other white clergy ignored the issue, or even preached in churches and wrote to King telling him he needed to calm down. (King responded with “Letter from a Birmingham Jail”)

Dates 

1619 Slavery begins in the American Colonies

1861 American Civil War fought over slavery 

1863 Slavery ends with the Emancipation Proclamation, and 13th Amendment.

        Reconstruction in the South leads to Jim Crow

1870 15th Amendment gives voting rights all men

1954 Brown vs Board of Education: begins the end of segregation in schools

1956 Montgomery Bus Boycotts (Rosa Parks)

1961 Freedom Riders

1963 Birmingham Campaign for integration

        16th Street Baptist Church bombing kills 4 little girls in Birmingham AL

1964 Civil Rights Act begins the end of segregation

        King awarded Nobel Peace Prize

1965 March 7: Bloody Sunday

        March 21: Selma March completed

        August 6: Voting Rights Act

1968 King assassinated

2013 Voting Rights Act gutted

Racial Slurs

Negro is not a slur at the time. (Black or African American become preferred terms later.) 

N*****, Nigra: the root of these words is simply “black,” but the meaning evolved and is used to remind people, “We are different. I used to own you.” 

Pickaninny: refers to little slave children picking cotton

Mongrel: a description of dogs with mixed parentage, used to describe people of mixed race, dehumanizing. Wallace says blacks voting will cause “mongrel politics.”

Confederate Flag: a minor symbol from the American Civil War, brought into popularity during Jim Crow. A flag shows what side you’re on.

Uncle Tom: a black person who supports oppression 

Spook: slur for a black person, implying that they are scary and able to hide in the dark.

White Trash, Cracker: insult to poor white people. A lot of American racism keeps poor white people fighting with poor black people instead of together standing up to the rich and powerful. 

Jim Crow Laws

Segregation: keeping black and white people separate in public. schools, bathrooms, drinking fountains, restaurants, buses, building entrances.

Voting: poll taxes, literacy tests, intimidation, doxxing, voting vouchers

Legal injustices: lynching, police brutality, execution, unfair prison sentences, slavery continues in prison. 

Nonviolent Resistance and Civil Disobedience

Jesus suggests peaceful resistance in Matthew 5:38-42. He was later executed by the state. Henry David Thoreau wrote “Civil Disobedience” in 1849. Gandhi was an early practitioner of nonviolent resistance as he spoke out against England’s colonial occupation of India in the 1940s. Nelson Mandela modeled the same practices against apartheid in South Africa in the 1980s.. 

Strategies: collective action, marches, protests, boycotts, sit-ins, civil action, hunger strikes, refusal to obey unjust laws, labor strikes, placing one's body in the way of being harmed, imprisoned, or killed.

Discussion: 

1. Many indirect strategies stopped black people from their legal right to vote. What strategies are used today to limit voting rights? How can we ensure the right to vote? 

2. King was a widely hated figure at the time. He was called violent and provocative. He broke the law and was jailed 29 times. Many Christians told him to obey the law. What do you think?

3. The civil rights leaders used peaceful resistance as a strategy. Why was it successful? In what ways was it not successful?  Why are people still critical of peaceful protests today?