Selma (2014) Historical Analysis

Russell Hermansen

History 1700-001
Ken C. Hansen
April 19, 2016

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Introduction
Selma (2014) was a film directed by Ava DuVernay and telling the story of the Selma
demonstrations that eventually forced President Lyndon B Johnson to sign the Voting Act of
1965. This amazing film about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. struggles during the months leading to
the Voting Act has won an Oscar in Best Achievement in Music Written for Motion Pictures,
Original Song and was nominated for Best Motion Picture of the Year. Selmas portrayal of
Dr. King, played by actor David Oyelowo, showed more of his personal life than any other film
before it, and fleshed out the relationship between him and his wife, Coretta Scott King played
by actor Carmen Ejogo, in between showing many historic events that happened during that
time. Ava DuVernay attempted to keep the production as historically accurate as she could, but
how true to history did she remain? In this paper I will be going over how true, or false to history
DuVernay remained.
Set Up
The Movie opens with their portrayal of Dr. Kings acceptance speech for the Nobel
Peace Prize in 1964 saying
I accept this honor for our lost one whose deaths paved our path, I accept this honor for
the more than twenty million Negros who are motivated by dignity. Together we believe
that what the illusion of supremacy has destroyed, the truth of equality, can nourish.
Although none of these words that are said in the film are said in the real twelve minute speech
delivered by King, they paraphrased some parts to make it follow better in the film. However
they left out some important aspects to Dr. Kings Speech that were important to the real speech,

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and still couldve been useful in the film to better shows Kings Pacifist ways. King stated many
times in his speech how peaceful protest was the best way to solve political problems, and
disagreed with militant fighting that had started to become very common. For example in his
speech he announced
Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that
nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social
transformation I refuse to accept the idea that the "isness" of man's present nature
makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal "oughtness" that forever
confronts him.1
This peaceful protesting is what King was known for, also, as later seen in the movie, exploiting
the violence of his opposition with news reporters and cameras there was also a big part to how
he spread his message to the ignorant white populace. As the speech panned out they showed the
Birmingham Church Bombing that occurred just one year before King gave his acceptance
speech. The bombing killed four black girls2 and it was reported that Robert Chambliss was seen
at the site before the bombs exploded, however he was found innocent for the crime and let out
with a one hundred dollar fine for owning dynamite. Later in the year 2000 the FBI discovered
that the bombing was carried out by a Ku Klux Klan Splinter group called the Cahaba Boys,
which included three other men with Robert Chambliss. These men were Herman Cash, Thomas

"Martin Luther King Jr. - Acceptance Speech". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web.
17 Apr 2016. <http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1964/kingacceptance_en.html>
1

2 Denise McNair age 11, Addie Mae Collins age14, Carole Robertson age 14 and Cynthia

Wesley age 14.

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Blanton and Bobby Cherry. The way the movie reproduced the bombing was very accurate to
how it actually happened.
Voting Problems
After the transition from Dr. Kings speech the film introduces
you to the difficulty that Africans Americans had trying to
register to vote. They introduce a black women attempting to
register to vote, you learn that her name is Annie Lee Cooper
(played by Oprah Winfrey) and you see the struggles she has to

Figure 1 Sixteenth Street Baptist

Church in Birmingham after bombing

go through to be able to vote. The clerk at the window asked her

to

recite the preamble, and how many county judges there where in
Alabama, when she answered them both correctly he asked them

Figure 2 Annie Lee

Cooper

to

name all of them and when she was unable to he denied her the right to vote. These types of
impossible tests vary and the most well-known is the literacy test where they only accepted
your registration to vote if you got one hundred percent on a test that was designed for you to
fail. These tests are one of the many ways that they denied blacks the right to vote, others
mentioned in the movie included poll taxes, voting vouchers, and how blacks addresses were put
in the paper if they attempted to vote. In the South there were poll-taxes all voters had to pay in
order to vote, these taxes ranged from one to five dollars a year, which is equivalent to around
fifteen dollars today. Furthermore the majority of blacks were poor and this forced them to
choose between voting or buying necessities for them and their families. If this approach didnt
work the posted addresses usually enticed violent retaliation from white hate-groups such as the
Ku Klux Klan.
First meeting with Lyndon B Johnson

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In the first meeting in the film between Dr. King and Lyndon B Johnson, Dr. King was
trying to get President Johnson to focus on the voting rights but Johnson was forceful and trying
to get King to help him on his agenda, and since that first scene there was a constant tug of war
between King and Johnson. While it is true that Johnsons administration took longer than it
should have the relationship between the two men was nowhere near as confrontational as the
movie suggested. In reality it was actually a productive
relationship between the two men and Johnson actually gave
solutions that he was planning to purpose to Dr. King. In a
conversation between King and Johnson over the phone on
January 15th, 1965 Johnson said referring to Literacy Tests and
the replacing state clerks.

Figure 3 Martin Luther King Jr.,

President Lyndon B Johnson

If you just clear it out everywhere, make it age and read and write. No tests on . . . what
[Geoffrey] Chaucer said or [Robert] Brownings poetry or constitutions or memorizing or
anything else. And then you may have to put them in the post office, let the Post
Masterthats a federal employee that I control who they can say is local; hes
recommended by the congressman, hes approved by the senator, but if he doesnt
register everybody I can put a new one in.3
However it is true that President Johnson was focusing on bettering the education system,
fighting poverty, and healthcare at the time, and pushed the voting rights back on his priority list,
but that doesnt mean that he forgot about them. In an opinion peace in the Washington Post
Joseph A. Califano Jr., President Johnsons top assistant for domestic affairs at the time, said In
fact, Selma was LBJs idea, he considered the Voting Rights Act his greatest legislative
3 http://millercenter.org/presidentialrecordings/lbj-wh6501.04-6736

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achievement, he viewed King as an essential partner in getting it enacted... further proving the
falsehood of the relationship depicted between the two men in the movie.
Annie Lee Cooper/ Jimmie Lee Jackson
During the first march to the county courthouse, the film portrays Annie Lee Cooper being beat
down by James Clark, but this is heavily dramatized with the slow motion and the acting. The
New York Times reported the confrontation between the two saying A large Negro woman
stepped out of the voter registration line today and punched Sheriff James G. Clark in the face,"
This suggested that Annie Lee Cooper is the one who instigated
the confrontation. However in a later article written about
James Clark death and his history in 2007 by the Washington
post it recited Mr. Clark prompted a violent encounter with a
54-year-old

Figure 4 Photo accompanied

with the New York Times article

black woman, Annie Lee Cooper It is

unclear exactly what happened that day, but it is still highly believed today that Clark did start
the confrontation by poking Cooper with a Billy club. After the altercation happened she was
arrested along with other black protestors including Dr. King.
On February 18th, 1965, the night that Dr. King was going to be released from jail,
Jimmie Lee Jackson was shot by an Alabama State Trooper. Just like in the movie he ran to
Macks Caf after the night protest. However this did not occur in Selma and occurred in Marion,
Alabama. Jackson and his protestors were actually protesting the confinement of James Orange,
who worked with the SCLC4. Furthermore the movie depicted the incident as if Jimmie Lee
Jackson died in his mother arms, but in reality he died one week later on February 26th. 45 years

4 Southern Christian Leadership Conference

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later the Alabama State Trooper, James Bonnard Fowler, pleaded

guilty to the murder of Jackson and served 6 months in prison.
Bloody Sunday

Figure 5 Jimmie Lee

Jackson

With the death of Jimmie Lee Jackson, Dr. King made a speech
that set up a march from Selma to Montgomery. This lead to the biggest

event that happened in Selma, and the movies most emotional scenes. On March 7th, 1965 six
hundred protestors led by John Lewis and other SCLC leaders attempted to cross the Edmund
Pettus Bridge. Early on in the scene when they approach the bridge guarded by Alabama State
Troopers, you see an exchange between John Lewis and SCLC leader, Hosea Williams. Williams
asked Lewis if he knew how to swim, with Lewis responding saying that there werent any pools
for black people where he came from. This line and others pertaining to the Bloody Sunday
scene were taken from Lewis memoir Walking with the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement.
When they came up to the bridge Lewis and Hosea exchanged words with the Clarke. After the
exchanges between Lewis and the Clarke, the militia put on their gas masks and used many
weapons to brutally abuse the six hundred protestors. Some weapons used to harm these
protestors included whips, tear gas, Billy clubs, and more. The man on the phone reporting the
incident described the scene well telling about the militia, and men on horseback, behind them.
Many of the shots in the film were recreated photos taken from news reports, and coverage from
CBS News. One of these recreated images was were John Lewis was holding Amelia Boynton.
While the reporters words were not actually the reports words the line He (John Lewis) said I
dont see how President Johnson can send troops to Vietnam, and cant send troops to Selma,
Alabama. To which the Negros present roared their approval. This quote from the movie while
not one hundred percent accurate drove in the historical emotion that made it to many of the

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viewers watching. The only thing that Selma

got wrong is that the film portrayed that people
around America were watching the events that
took place live, however they didnt see any of
the events until later that night, because at the

Figure 7 John Lewis and

Amelia Boynton

Figure 8 Scene portrayed

in Selma (2014)

time there was no live coverage of the news. Despite that little
mistake, this scene along with the song Walk with me Lord by
Martha Bass playing in the background captures this terrifying
historical event fairly accurately and produces a lot of the same
Figure 6 men confronting
Alabama State Troopers

emotions that were felt back on that Sunday in 1965.

Second and final march

The movies portrayal of the Second march was accurate, Dr. King called clergy and many
religious and non-religious whites rallied around Dr. King and the Civil Rights Activists. This
demonstration was larger, Dr. King turned back at the end of the Edmund Pettus Bridge where
Bloody Sunday took place, because he feared that they would not make it far without federal
court protection. Unlike the movie where you only see two clergymen attack, three white
clergymen were attacked and killed by members of the KKK. The court case with Judge Johnson
ended with Johnson saying The law is clear that the right to petition one's government for the
redress of grievances may be exercised in large groups...," With the Courts Approval Dr. King
and protestors started their third and final march on Sunday March 21st. Nearly 3,200 marchers
left Selma and by the time they reached Montgomery on Thursday, March 25th they had around
25,000.
Conclusion

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Selma (2014) portrays the events leading up to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. There are
many historical inconsistency that are caused from overdramatizing events for the sake of
entertainment. Lyndon B Johnsons relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King was misrepresented
in the movie along with the assault of Annie Lee Cooper. All the speeches in the movie do not
contain any of Dr. Kings original speech and parts are paraphrased and focused on statements
that will push the movies plot forward. Jimmie Lee Jacksons death was rushed in order to keep
the movie flowing quickly and to dramatize the scene where he was shot in the caf. However
many of the big events that happened in the movie such as Bloody Sunday, the second and the
third march are as accurate as humanly possible. Selma also does a very good job of using the
drama to make its audience feel the same emotions that were felt in 1965. Although not
mentioned in this paper they also made Dr. King a more relatable character by showing some of
Martins moral flaws, such as smoking which he did do from time to time. Overall Selma is an
excellent movie that shows what it was like to live in that time and what it took protestors to
overcome the racism and bigotry of the time.

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Bernstein, Adam. "Ala. Sheriff James Clark; Embodied Violent Bigotry." Washington Post. June
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