Op-Ed

‘Selma:’ It’s Not Just a Movie

Published

10 years ago

January 26, 2015

By Lee A. Daniels
NNPA Columnist

There is something at work in both the appearance itself of Ana DuVernay’s “Selma” and in the controversy over her depiction of President Lyndon Baines Johnson as an antagonist of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. that deserves our profound interest – and gratitude.

Consider the fact that “Selma” has appeared in the midst of four racially-significant anniversaries: First, the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Movement in general, and, more specifically, the freedom struggle in Selma, Ala. that produced the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. Secondly, it also comes as America continues to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Civil War and Black Americans’ emancipation from slavery.

Equally significant, “Selma” has appeared within a two-year framework of significant anniversaries of two of the most celebrated – and racist – films Hollywood has ever produced.

This year marks the centennial of the vicious “Birth of A Nation.” That film’s path-breaking techniques of story-telling have forever praised by film buffs and historians, a chorus of praise that’s generally downplayed or ignored altogether the film’s advocacy of lynching as a central plank of Jim Crow and the national protest movement that blacks organized against it.

And finally, 2014 was the 75th anniversary of “Gone With The Wind.” Its gauzy depiction of slavery and caricatured Black characters “modernized” the stock racist stereotypes of Black Americans and the false narrative about the antebellum South and the Confederacy that many White Americans still pledge allegiance to. The film won eight Oscars and, according to a Harris Interactive survey conducted last month, remains most Americans’ favorite movie.

Beyond the connection between “Selma” and these anniversaries, of course, is the great fact that this is the sixth year of the tenure of the first Black president of the United States. (The president and First Lady Obamas screened the film at the White House on Jan. 16, with DuVernay and 40 other guests in attendance.)

In one sense, “Selma” is just a movie in that it follows the tradition of all historical films and biopics: it takes liberties with the facts in order to produce what the director feels will be a compelling narrative.

For example, I understand why DuVernay poignantly notes the murder of Viola Liuzzo, the White Detroit-area housewife who had journeyed to Selma to volunteer as a worker on the triumphant Selma to Montgomery march but omitted mentioning that two Black teenaged boys not connected with the March were murdered by Whites in Montgomery that day in retaliation for it. It’s because her expertly crafted, powerful narrative can’t take note of everything that happened. That’s why I also accept her mis-characterization of President Johnson.

She’s actually made him embody aspects of President John F. Kennedy and the infamous J. Edgar Hoover as well. Hopefully, the controversy will spur at least some viewers to read the histories that more accurately depict Johnson’s extraordinary contribution to the freedom struggle.

That particular debate is part of the proof that “Selma” is more than “just” a movie – that the “something at work” in the controversy about “Selma” is the contest of History.

David Carr, the New York Times media critic, recently wrote that “This is not a movie that endangers L.B.J.’s legacy, it cements King’s at a near perfect moment in history and should be celebrated as such.”

He’s right about that, but I’m glad for both the celebration and the controversy because that’s what the discussion of history is: a debate over people, ideas, and, yes, even facts. Indeed, due in large measure to the challenge the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s hurled at the untrue version of the American past and the American present, we’ve had an ever-increasing flood of books over the last half century that have unearthed more of the true histories of all Americans – Blacks, Whites, Asian-Americans, American Indians, Hispanic Americans, women as a group, gays and lesbians, White ethnic immigrants, etc.

In other words, what the Movement put at the top of the American agenda, and what “Selma” illustrates beautifully, was the right of Black Americans (and, by extension, other stigmatized groups) to express one’s views – by voice, by vote, by making a film, etc. – and have that be counted in the debate over what America was and is and will be.

In that regard, one can say of DuVernay’s “Selma” what one can say of the Civil Rights Movement itself: Mission Accomplished.

Lee A. Daniels is a longtime journalist based in New York City. His essay, “Martin Luther King, Jr.: The Great Provocateur,” appears in Africa’s Peacemakers: Nobel Peace Laureates of African Descent (2014), published by Zed Books. His new collection of columns, Race Forward: Facing America’s Racial Divide in 2014, is available at www.amazon.com.

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COMMENTARY: My Sunday School Lesson with President Jimmy Carter

When I saw him, Carter was spry, quick-witted, and kind. The former president wore a bolo string tie anchored by an eight-stone turquoise clasp that dangled below the neck, as he began the lesson on the subject of grief and the death of his 28-year-old grandson. Drawing from scripture (on this particular day, a passage on the persecution of the Thessalonians), Carter said such moments were simply tests of one’s faith, endurance, and hope.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 5, 2025

Oakland Post

Photo courtesy of The White House.

By Emil Guillermo

President Jimmy Carter, at age 100, didn’t make it to the new year, nor the next presidential inaugural.

I’ve always been a big Carter fan, so the news of his passing brought me back to a happy place.

Plains, Georgia, 2016.

I was visiting family not far from the land of presidential peanut farmers. I found myself the only full-blooded Filipino in the room at Maranatha Baptist Church, the spiritual home base for the esteemed No. 39.

President Carter looked fine that Sunday in Plains. But especially fine for his job on that day– to give the Sunday school lesson on what coincidentally was the 15th anniversary of 9/11.

Carter’s health made headlines in 2015 when he disclosed having both brain and liver cancer. It was thought he had just two or three weeks to live.

Everyone’s always underestimating Carter. After treatments, Carter’s forecast turned out not to be true.

“We lack inspiration, we lack the idealism to set our goals high. We’ve been satisfied with mediocrity. And I include myself,” Carter said. People want an average life, instead of aspiring to be, “outstanding, or superb or brilliant or exceptional.”

“I’m afraid that our country and its effect on people of other nations has suffered from the aftermath of 9/11,” Carter said. He “didn’t want to brag,” but said his goal for the country was always to be “superb and be a country that promoted peace and human rights…While I was in office, we never dropped a bomb, lost a missile, or fired a bullet.”

“Since 9/11,” Carter said, “we’ve pretty much abandoned our commitment to human rights as we reacted to terrorism.” He lamented that Afghanistan had become the longest war in American history, a direct outcome of 9/11, as well as the invasion of Iraq, which Carter called “unnecessary.”

Carter, whose administration took us out of an energy crisis, also pointed out how the U.S. is still suffering from a financial crisis that has exposed a deep inequality that has divided us as a people.

“We’ve become distrustful of people who are different from us,” Carter said. “We used to be a proud heterogeneous nation…and now we are fearful…and we’ve become poorer as a country.”

Carter won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2002; a fact that belies how many conservatives view his efforts to find a peace in the Middle East as “anti-Semitic.”

Jimmy Carter’s worldview requires open minds to come together. Too often. these days, that seems nearly impossible.

About the Author

Emil Guillermo is a journalist and commentator He was the first Filipino American to host a national news show in 1989 at NPR’s “All Things Considered.” See Emil Amok’s Takeout on www.patreon.com/emilamok Subscribe to him on YouTube.com/@emilamok1

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In 1974, Then-Gov. Jimmy Carter Visited the Home of Oakland Black Black Political Activist Virtual Murrell While Running for President

civil rights icon Georgia State Representative Julian Bond said that Carter, along with governors Reuben Askew of Florida, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Terry Sanford of North Carolina, were all a part of what was being dubbed the “New South” and so supported civil rights and voting rights for African Americans.

Published

2 weeks ago

January 3, 2025

Oakland Post

Virtual Murrell chats with Jimmy Carter two years before Carter was elected president in 1976. Courtesy photo.

By Virtual T. Murrell
Special to The Post

On his way to seeking the presidency, then-Gov. Jimmy Carter visited the Bay Area in his capacity as campaign chairman of the Democratic National Committee in March of 1974.

A friend of mine, Bill Lynch, a Democrat from San Francisco, had been asked to host Carter, who was then relatively unknown. Seeking my advice on the matter, I immediately called my friend, civil rights icon Georgia State Representative Julian Bond, for his opinion.

Bond said that Carter, along with governors Reuben Askew of Florida, Dale Bumpers of Arkansas, and Terry Sanford of North Carolina, were all a part of what was being dubbed the “New South” and so supported civil rights and voting rights for African Americans.

Based on Julian’s comments, I agreed to host the governor. We picked him up at the San Francisco Airport. With his toothy smile, I could tell almost right away that he was like no other politician I had ever met. On his arrival, there was a message telling him to go to the VIP room, where he met then-Secretary of State Jerry Brown.

After leaving the airport, we went to a reception in his honor at the home of Paul “Red” Fay, who had served as the acting secretary of the Navy under President John Kennedy. (Carter, it turned out, had been himself a 1946 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and served as a submariner in the 1950s.)

The following afternoon, the Niagara Movement Democratic Club hosted a reception for Carter, which was a major success. Carter indicated that he would be considering running for president and hoped for our support if he did so.

As the event was winding down, I witnessed the most amazing moment: Carter’s wife, Rosalynn, was in the kitchen with my former wife, Irene, wearing an apron and busting suds! You would have to have been there to see it: The first and last time a white woman cleaned up my kitchen.

A few months later, President Richard Nixon resigned amid the Watergate scandal. He was succeeded by his vice president, Gerald Ford.

On the heels of that scandal, Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976 represented integrity and honesty at a point in America’s history when he was just what the nation needed to lead as president of the United States.

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Life After Domestic Violence: What My Work With Black Women Survivors Has Taught Me

Survivors sometimes lack awareness about the dynamics of healthy relationships, particularly when one has not been modeled for them at home. Media often minimizes domestic abuse, pushing the imagery of loyalty and love for one’s partner above everything — even harm.

Published

3 weeks ago

December 29, 2024

Oakland Post

Paméla Michelle Tate, Ph.D.

By Paméla Michelle Tate, Ph.D., California Black Media Partners

It was the Monday morning after her husband had a “situation” involving their child, resulting in food flying in the kitchen and a broken plate.

Before that incident, tensions had been escalating, and after years of unhappiness, she finally garnered enough courage to go to the courthouse to file for a divorce.

She was sent to an on-site workshop, and the process seemed to be going well until the facilitator asked, “Have you experienced domestic abuse?” She quickly replied, “No, my husband has never hit me.”

The facilitator continued the questionnaire and asked, “Has your husband been emotionally abusive, sexually abusive, financially abusive, technologically abusive, or spiritually abusive?”

She thought about how he would thwart her plans to spend time with family and friends, the arguments, and the many years she held her tongue. She reflected on her lack of access to “their money,” him snooping in her purse, checking her social media, computer, and emails, and the angry blowups where physical threats were made against both her and their children.

At that moment, she realized she had been in a long-suffering domestic abuse relationship.

After reading this, you might not consider the relationship described above as abusive — or you might read her account and wonder, “How didn’t she know that she was in an abusive relationship?”

After working with survivors at Black Women Revolt Against Domestic Violence in San Francisco, California, I have learned a great deal from a variety of survivors. Here are some insights:

Abuse thrives in isolation.
Societal tolerance of abusive behavior is prevalent in the media, workplaces, and even churches, although there are societal rules about the dos and don’ts in relationships.

Survivors are groomed into isolation.
Survivors are emotionally abused and manipulated almost from the beginning of their relationships through love-bombing. They are encouraged or coerced into their own little “love nest,” isolating them from family and friends.

People who harm can be charismatic and fun.
Those outside the relationship often struggle to believe the abuser would harm their partner until they witness or experience the abusive behavior firsthand.

Survivors fear judgment.
Survivors fear being judged by family, friends, peers, and coworkers and are afraid to speak out.

Survivors often still love their partners.
This is not Stockholm Syndrome; it’s love. Survivors remember the good times and don’t want to see their partner jailed; they simply want the abuse to stop.

The financial toll of abuse is devastating.
According to the Allstate Foundation’s study, 74% of survivors cite lack of money as the main reason for staying in abusive relationships. Financial abuse often prevents survivors from renting a place to stay. Compounding this issue is the lack of availability of domestic abuse shelters.

The main thing I have learned from this work is that survivors are resilient and the true experts of their own stories and their paths to healing. So, when you encounter a survivor, please take a moment to acknowledge their journey to healing and applaud their strength and progress.

About the Author

Paméla Michelle Tate, Ph.D., is executive director of Black Women Revolt Against Domestic Violence in San Francisco.