True art imitates life but it can never be art for art’s sake. The most elevated art is but a reflection of the struggles, ideas and inspiration of a particular nation, class or race. Through her eloquent and powerful graphic presentation of events leading up to the historic march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, Ava DuVernay, the director and producer of the film, has shown us more social and political truths than all the politicians, pundits and moralists put together. She achieved this by giving a truthful depiction, by having a concrete historical approach to the events described and by giving depth and content to the ideals and genuine passions that express the many-sided facets of individual characters.

There is no abstract moralizing, no impersonations instead of live characters. The cast of characters, Dr. King, Correta Scott King, Malcolm X, LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover manifest from the actions they are engaged in the purpose and direction of the movie. There are bombings, police brutalities and murder, jailing and repression served up by racist white mob violence, the local police and highway patrol. There is the FBI harassment orchestrated by J. Edgar Hoover and buttressed by the political chicanery of LBJ; and yet these courageous people continue to march and protest, continue to rise up in spite of threats, murderous violence, slander and numerous dirty tricks.

They dared to struggle and dared to win. LBJ dared to try to hold the movement back and he lost. But the driving force in the fight for the right to vote was the people, that vast army of men and women who were workers, students, men of the cloth, mothers and their children, seniors, radicals, socialists and communists who put their bodies on the line over and over again; these were the people who came face to face with the armed might of the state, who bled and died in the streets of Selma and yet did not falter in their resolve to march on. It was these people and their leaders, who walked through the valley of the shadow of death, that gave us our finest hour and that fleeting moment of glory before the assassin’s bullet found first Malcolm and then King.

Those who decry this movie as a farce because it didn’t make LBJ the hero who saved the day are a farce themselves. I am talking about the New York Times and the Washington Post and all their cohorts. Go see the movie and I promise you, that because you have a conscience it will speak to you in the words of Dr. King: “No lie can live forever…Truth crushed to earth shall rise again…I have seen the promised land…I fear not any man…mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!”

This is the movie for the world to see because it gives to one an inside look into one of the most racist and oppressive societies known to humanity. But you can’t venture to look and not be moved in your heart and mind to detest the cruelties of racism and to love and be in solidarity with those who fight back. If you are in the struggle it will inspire you to stay in and give more, if you are not it may inspire you to join the struggle and make it your life.

Frank Chapman is Field Organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

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In March, while thousands, including big-name politicians and civil rights leaders, rallied to commemorate Bloody Sunday – the march for voting rights in 1965 that was met with fierce police brutality – vandals broke into the center, trashing rooms, destroying office equipment, pulling plumbing from ceilings, cutting appliance cords and spray painting racial slurs and obscenities on the walls, even severing gas lines. This resulted in a total of $200,000 worth of damage.

This is not the first hate crime committed against members and leaders of the 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement. Cars were firebombed outside the law offices of organizers Hank and Rose Sanders at the height of the “Joe Gotta Go” campaign against Selma’s incumbent republican candidate for mayor, Joe Smitherman, in 2000.

The progressive local African-American radio station has been the target of multiple attacks, and both the tower and the station itself have been set fire to and burned down. Road signs for the nearby Martin Luther King Drive have been shot up repeatedly, as has the grave of Jimmy Lee Jackson, whose murders sparked the march on Selma in 1965.

Yet despite the atmosphere of national oppression and racism, the FBI refuses to classify this incident as a hate crime, instead shifting the blame to the organization. “The FBI won’t take this seriously,” Rose Sanders, president and co-founder of the 21st Century Youth Leadership project, said in exasperation. “They say it’s not a hate crime, but they’ve only sent one agent here one time to survey the crime scene. They say to us, ‘You did it to yourself.’ They always try and turn it on us. We can’t depend on the FBI, and we get no protection from the law. They’ll wait until somebody’s dead and even then they’ll say, ‘Oh, that's not a hate crime!’”

Hate crimes are unfortunately all too familiar in Selma, a city Martin Luther King chose for voter registration drives in the 60’s precisely because of its reputation for intense racism and national oppression. Local politics are notoriously corrupt, and, according to Malika Sanders Fortier, the Justice Department is called in to intervene in practically every election. Still, election fraud is a well-known fact, and has ensured that most of the city council stays white and that the reactionary segregationist Joe Smitherman, who once referred to the Rev. Martin Luther King as “Martin Luther Coon,” cheated his way into the mayor’s office from 1964 to his death in 2000. “The mayor has stated publicly that he thinks Black people can’t run their own cities,” says Fortier.

Gerrymandering has ensured white control of political offices in this Black Belt city, where the majority, 70% of the population, is African-American. “We outnumber them here,” explained Fortier, as she pointed to where the vandals ripped sinks from the wall in the kitchen. “That is why that are afraid, that is why they want to keep tight control on us...they try and keep high-paying jobs out of Selma. They don’t want us to have enough money, they want us to stay in check.”

The 21st Century Youth Leadership Movement and its supporters are hoping to organize future clean-ups to help restore the center, as well as raise funds for renovation. Students and activists come to camps at the center from various areas in the South and from as far away as Senegal and Mali in West Africa.

The center needs assistance from those skilled in plumbing, electrical and other types of maintenance. They are also calling on the nation to demand that the perpetrators be brought to justice and that this be called what it is – a hate crime, not a burglary.

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