This morning I watched coverage on the 50th anniversary of Bloody Sunday, the first attempt at the voting rights march in Selma, Alabama. I am re-blogging my post from January after I saw the film “Selma” which draws together the story of the march with recent events.
– JC
When the events depicted in the film Selma occurred, I was a four-year-old girl in rural New England. I do remember seeing Dr. King on the news when I was a bit older and definitely remember his assassination in 1968 in the midst of the Memphis strike by black public works employees who were facing discrimination. It was incomprehensible – then and now – that a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and leader of such an important social movement could have been only 39 when he died. Because he was such a force and martyred so young, his legacy became a legend, masking his complexity as a human being. While the public life of some of those around King, such as Ambassador Andrew Young and Rep. John Lewis, was decades long and vital to keeping the civil rights movement going forward while remembered its momentous, if painful, past, King’s life has…
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