MHCC historians discuss ‘Selma’

Mt. Hood historians Pat Casey and Elizabeth Milliken talked Wednesday about the artistic intent and historical accuracy in the Ava DuVernay-directed Martin Luther King Jr. movie “Selma,” as a part of MHCC’s “Historians’ Roundtable” series.

Casey said that “in the world of history, what we are all about is trying to explain context,” and that with the talk lasting less than an hour, “there’s no way we can seriously cover the civil rights movement.” But, he gave a basic rundown of some main points.

He started the history rundown with segregation in the South. According to a U.S. Supreme Court decision (Plessy v. Ferguson), “separating black and white people is legal as long as it’s equal… but it never worked,” he said.

Everything was segregated: movie theaters, buses, drinking fountains, and schools. The “separate, but equal” part of the law was not happening because everything made for African Americans was inferior to what the white people had.

“There was not much interest in white America to deal with civil rights, so black folks did it themselves and this was in the 1950s with the first big breakthrough,” said Casey.

Martin Luther King Jr. was minister of the largest black church in Montgomery, Ala. He was the son of a rich minister. “One of the few things black folks could do that paid well was being religious, and that’s what his dad did,” Casey said.

King got seriously involved with the Civil Rights Movement during the Montgomery bus boycott, which took off as a result of the arrest of NAACP member Rosa Parks.

Parks and King spent some time in jail as a result of their actions. “You accept the validity of the system, you think the United States is good and valid, therefore you will follow its laws, and you will also take its punishment. So, here is Martin Luther King working within the system violating the law, but then taking his valid punishment for doing it, and that’s another central thing,” said Casey.

Casey and Milliken spent some time talking about President John F. Kennedy’s cautious attitude towards the civil rights movement. “John F. Kennedy, if anything, sort of a moderate, (was) sort of very careful with all this civil rights stuff, but all of this finally moved him to submit a civil rights bill to Congress,” said Casey.

President Lyndon Johnson, a southerner (from Texas), surprisingly jumped to supporting and passing legislation to advance civil rights.

One of the main criticisms of “Selma,” is the portrayal of the relationship between Johnson and King.

“The criticisms that had come, as the movie has been shown, are from people who were close to Lyndon Johnson, (some of whom) who were historians to Lyndon Johnson, said Milliken.

The events that are covered in the movie are based on what began as an attack on a black church in Birmingham, and by 1964-65 white people started to come into the movement.

“In spite of the civil rights act being passed, the city of Selma was chosen in part in 1965 because it had a vicious law enforcement department, and this was going to be a culmination of some organizing,” said Milliken. The people attempting a mass march, covering about 50 miles from Selma to the state capitol building in Montgomery, were brutally beaten by Alabama state troopers and local law officers.

After national outrage and outpouring of new support, King and other leaders successfully led the march a few days later, uninterrupted by violence.

Milliken said that the inaccuracies with the historical content of the film are justified, because the film is more of an interpretation of what the director got from the civil rights movement.

The Roundtable talk moved to voting rights, and President Johnson getting the national Voting Rights Act passed. The segregated system never explicitly said that black people can’t vote, but many unjust obstacles were put in their way, Casey and Milliken noted. The two said that voting fraud acts of today often restrict voting for college-aged adults.

Most of King’s speeches were also not quoted verbatim in the movie, because King’s family copyrighted them all and Steven Spielberg owns the rights to them, said Casey.