Oprah, ‘Selma’ stars re-enact famous 1965 march
SELMA, Ala. – Oprah Winfrey, fellow actors from the movie “Selma” and hundreds of others marched to recall one of the bloodiest chapters of the civil rights movement on Sunday, the eve of the national holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr.
The remembrance comes after several incidents in which unarmed black men were killed by police in recent months, spurring protests and heightening tensions around the country. In Ferguson, Missouri, where one fatal shooting caused weeks of violent protests, leading black members of Congress pressed for further reforms of the criminal justice system in the name of equality.
Eight members of the Congressional Black Caucus joined U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay at Wellspring United Methodist Church in Ferguson as they took up King’s legacy in light of the recent deaths.
“We need to be outraged when local law enforcement and the justice system repeatedly allow young, unarmed black men to encounter police and then wind up dead with no consequences,” said Clay, a St. Louis Democrat. “Not just in Ferguson, but over and over again across this country.”
In Selma, Winfrey marched with “Selma” director Ava DuVernay, actor David Oyelowo, who portrayed King in the movie, and the rapper Common. Winfrey was a producer on the film and, like Common, had an acting role. They marched to Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights protesters were beaten and tear-gassed in 1965.
“Every single person who was on that bridge is a hero,” Winfrey told the marchers before they walked up the bridge as the sun went down over the Alabama River. Common and John Legend performed their Oscar-nominated song “Glory” from the film as marchers crested the top of the bridge.
“Selma” chronicled the campaign leading up to the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and the subsequent passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
Law enforcement officers used clubs and tear gas on March 7, 1965 – “Bloody Sunday” – to rout marchers intent on walking some 50 miles to Montgomery, the Alabama capital, to seek the right for blacks to register to vote. A new march, led by King, started March 21 of that year and reached Montgomery days later with the crowd swelling to 25,000.
Today, the Selma bridge and adjoining downtown business district look much as they did in 1965, though many storefronts are empty and government buildings are occupied largely by African-American officials who are beneficiaries of the Voting Rights Act.
Other King events planned for today’s federal holiday include a wreath-laying in Maryland, a tribute breakfast in Boston and volunteer service activities by churches and community groups in Illinois. In South Carolina, civil rights leaders readied for their biggest rally of the year.
And in Georgia, King’s legacy also was being celebrated at the church he pastored in Atlanta. In the Sunday sermon, professor James Cone of New York’s Union Theological Seminary urged Ebenezer Baptist Church’s congregation to celebrate the slain civil rights leader “by making a political and a religious commitment to complete his work of justice.”