"Going to Selma was always an escape from the daily grind, primarily because of its emptiness. There was no Target or Starbucks, and there still is not. Selma has one of a few things and not a whole lot of anything, except history. Every year there is a commemorative march and jubilee street festival and concert to honor the civil…
The University of Oklahoma Sigma Alpha Epsilon video is all over CNN and my timeline on Facebook and Twitter. I have never seen a university react so quickly to anything. Universities are bureaucratic mines where ideas rarely lead to action with any sort of speed. However, I question whether they acted too quickly. The fraternity members were absolutely wrong and…
*CONTAINS SPOILERS* I went to see the movie SELMA last night, and it excelled at serving as an agent of empathy, an educational resource, a reminder of the struggle for Civil Rights, and it put a soul to the names that history has memorialized. Much praise has been given to David Oyelowo, whose best moment is in his rendering of King's…
My father grew up in Selma, Alabama, and my extended family gathered there for Thanksgiving in 2014. There were about 100 of us at Thanksgiving dinner. Our family has very deep roots in Selma and in Gee’s Bend (famous for the quilts in the Smithsonian). My aunts and uncles marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and our family has driven across that bridge a thousand times.
It’s amazing. I have been to Selma dozens of times in my life, and it holds a place in my heart that is mostly centered around homemade food, firecrackers, cousins, gravel roads, trailer parks, poverty, and simplicity. Seeing it as an adult, I see the effects that the bad PR of racism had on the city. Selma is impoverished, lacking jobs, has a high violent crime rate, full of empty storefronts, and still segregated.
I wanted to interview SELMA director Ava DuVernay after hearing her speak at the BronzeLens Film Festival in Atlanta, but I was unable to interview her, because…well…she’s a Golden Globe nominee and I am not Barbara Walters or Oprah…Alas, here are some photos from my trip of the REAL Selma.
