Executive Director’s Message

Selma

By Janlee Wong, MSW

Over the MLK holiday, my wife and I attended a special screening of the movie Selma held by the Greater Vallejo Chapter of Jack and Jill of America. A must see movie for all; it invoked the memories of the great civil rights struggles of the 1950s and 1960s.

As a teenager in that era, I remember distinctly the black and white images on TV of Bull Connor unleashing hateful violence on peaceful protesters and the horrific assault by so-called “peace officers” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

I remember discussions with my parents, my uncle and my siblings about the struggle. My uncle and siblings identified with the protesters because Asian Americans also struggled with vehement racism and hatred over the years. My parents however, like many in the Asian American community, adopted a learned deference and passivism as a means to survive. At the time, it was only 80 years earlier when Chinese American communities were burned down and its residents murdered. It was only 25 years earlier when Japanese Americans were rounded up and sent to American concentration camps.

In addition to being inspired and reenergized by the movie, a new side and dimension of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. emerged. History and documentaries tend to objectify the great figures with dates and facts. Holidays and remembrances emphasize greatness but without the internal struggles and dilemmas that people have. If we don’t know the internal struggles that great leaders have, we are distanced as human beings from the object of the praise.

Drama, in the form of a movie, adds that special connection that makes us all human. Selma helped me understand the great struggles and dilemmas that Dr. King faced and eventually overcame. My reaction to the movie portrayal was of seeing a deeply burdened man shouldering all that has and will happen first to black people and to all people. He was able to take deeply emotional issues and see the greater picture as evidenced by the scenes of disagreement with both his fellow organizers and with the white power structure. He also understood the value of timing, opportunity and patience.

In social work school we learn the value of social justice and the potential efficacy of social action. Action can be an immediate emotional response such as marching and protesting as well as violence and destruction. Action can also be institutional and policy changes albeit a slower process.

Dr. King knew what needed to be done in Selma but after the initial deaths and injuries, he chose another path, a slower, more thought-out and deliberate path. When leading the second march on the bridge, he turned around. This for me meant he turned from violence, injury and death to a path that would lead ultimately to victory. We may also see the initial violence as preparing the stage for the final success. Do we see that today with the needless deaths of young black and other men as that stage leading to longer term changes in our institutions and public policies?

Just in Selma’s era, we need a dialog with all of us, together in one human community. But just as in Selma, we don’t agree, get defensive and stop talking to each other. On one side, there are those that feel wronged and on the other, those who feel no wrong has been done. One moviegoer said her mother had lived through that civil rights era and didn’t need to relive it. In social worker think, we’d call that post-traumatic stress. Yet we also met someone who went to Selma and ended up in jail alongside King and Abernathy. She was very proud, open and willing to revisit her experience. How can we help those with post-traumatic stress reopen so that we may learn from each other?

We also need to help those who feel guilt and remorse come in from the cold. I learned this from the portrayal of Governor George Wallace. It’s easy to see him and all white southerners in that era as completely racist to a vile degree. Yet if we fail to see the complexity of individuals as we do with George Wallace, we won’t be able to have real dialog and consequently real change. Do we want to repeat the Selma emotional experience over and over again forever?

While he continues to be the historical icon for everything racist and segregationist, he, like President Nixon, was driven by sheer political ambition propped up by the racist voters of the time. I decided to learn more about Wallace, the evil protagonist in the movie. In his first run for Governor, Wallace was endorsed by the NAACP and lost. In his last term as Governor, he apologized to black civil rights leaders and appointed more blacks to state positions (160) than any governor before or after. He also visited both St. Jude’s Church (a resting place after the Selma to Montgomery march) and the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church (where Dr. King pastored) to apologize and ask forgiveness for his racist and segregationist past. He stood in the same doorway at the University of Alabama where he announced “segregation forever,” and said he was wrong.

If George Wallace can be reformed and redeemed, why can’t we all do so in our own way? In our current civil rights struggles with Ferguson, New York City and many other places, we need to start the dialog and reach the prize. While Dr. King reached “a prize,” he said himself that he might not in his lifetime reach the grand prize of peace, freedom and equality for all. It’s on us to continue the struggle and to follow his dream, which is our dream too.