A Wonkette Movie Special Event: Selma

'We negotiate, we demonstrate, we resist.'

Selma is the dramatized telling of the fight for voting rights through the story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. When I chose this movie for us to watch it was to honor Dr. King, but what I didn’t realize is how much this story would resonate today. Thinking about writing this post, I told a friend that my MLK Jr. knowledge was sadly lacking and she recommended two things to me. To read the entire “Letter From a Birmingham Jail” (PDF here) and listen to the full “I Have a Dream” speech.

It helped me to watch the film Selma with a clearer eye. Selma does a remarkably good job of showing this moment in history from a variety of perspectives. Giving us a deeper look into what can sometimes just be viewed as a historic photo or a great line from one speech.

John Lewis and many other courageous men and women were beaten as they crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge. But they kept fighting for their goal of voting rights that were unencumbered. They kept fighting when the laws tried to hold them down, things like a poll tax or local registrars who demanded that a Black woman recite the names of all the county judges to be allowed to even register.

They fought even knowing they might not get to see the victory at the end. But if they hadn’t kept fighting there would have been no victory. Dr. King understood it was a long fight. That no matter what the racists threw at him, like a punch to the jaw from a white boy, he would keep moving forward.

"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

Selma stars David Oyelowo, Carmen Ejogo, Niecy Nash, Steven James, Oprah Winfrey, Common, Cuba Gooding, Jr., Tim Roth, Lorraine Toussaint, Tessa Thompson, Jeremy Strong, Colman Domingo, and Tom Wilkinson. Directed by Ava DuVernay.

Selma is available with subscription on Netflix, Paramount+ and Fubo TV. $3.99 in the usual places.

To make requests and see the movie lists and schedules go to WonkMovie.

The cartoon is Our Friend, Martin from 1999. It’s an hour long so maybe save it for later. Two time traveling sixth graders meet a 12-year-old Martin Luther King Jr. and move through time to learn about his life and the civil rights movement.