Selma - Choices

If there were some moments in the movie where I was tense because I knew what was going to happen, there were others where not knowing did not relieve the tension.

When James Reeb's name was first said, I knew it was familiar but couldn't place it. It wasn't until they left the restaurant and were approached that I remembered "minister beaten to death".

With Jimmie Lee Jackson, I am not positive, but they might have avoided saying his whole name until after he was dead. Honestly, I probably still would have been slow to remember. Because I didn't know, all of my tension was focused on his grandfather, Cager Lee.

I saw Jimmie's passion for the cause, but I also saw his constant worry for his mother and grandfather as they participated in the demonstration at the courthouse and then the walk. The whole time I was afraid for Cager, and then Jimmie was shot.

Before that, I was thinking that maybe it would have been better for Cager to stay home. Yes, he cared, and for people who were being denied the vote the demonstrations were one of the few available options to make your voice heard, but then there is this worry.

I was thinking about that throughout the movie, with no good answers.

The movement had martyrs, and that contributed to the cause. Observers were outraged, it gave a clear picture of the situation and the stakes, and yet looking at any case before, you aren't really going to want it. Cager Lee was the first person in his family to vote, but if you had asked him to give his grandson for that, what would he have said? Then what if you had asked him to give his grandson for the Voting Rights Act, where it wasn't just his vote, but everyone's?

Actually, I'm pretty sure he would have said "Take me instead". It's not even that you don't always get that choice, but often it isn't obvious that the choice is being made. When you are walking into a line of mounted police, you know there is danger, but just leaving a restaurant like James Reeb was doing probably seemed safe. Of course it was an integrated restaurant, and he was in town for that walk across the bridge.

Viola Liuzzo survived the march, and before that she survived her NAACP activism in Michigan. She died giving marchers rides. There were catcalls, but the march itself was over. It could have seemed safe. Sometimes you die just because of where you are in the church when the bomb goes off. You don't know what will happen.

But you never really do. You can just as easily die because someone was drinking and driving, or because your car looked like someone else's car, or you slipped in the shower. The only thing you can really decide is to live well.

That means different things to different people, but it shouldn't mean oppressing anyone else. It shouldn't mean supporting the oppression of anyone else. It should mean being informed about what's going on around you, and not blindly accepting the status quo.

I don't feel like I do very much, and what I do tends to be more for individuals than for society, but there is guidance, and I am trying to follow that. That is worth developing. Sometimes that guide will keep you out of danger, or lead you out once you are in it, but even if the danger overtakes me, I want to know that I was in a good place, doing a good thing.