One of the most insightful parts of the Academy Award nominated film “Selma” was when Martin Luther King Jr and his team were meeting with the student leaders that were running the grassroots efforts in Selma. The conflict was in that these student leaders were the local hands that had invested in the plight of civil rights in that town and were the ones who were day in and day out having to face the realities of that fight, while King and his team were like rockstars coming into town who would bring the national public spotlight only to leave once they were done, leaving the locals holding the bag and having to pick up the pieces. It’s easy to see this being the case, and as pointed out in the movie, this had happened before.
King steps up to these two young gentlemen and openly admits the mistakes made on the previous campaign against a sheriff who was too smart and too composed for them to be effective. He then commends the work these men had done in the community, but he identified that his purpose is different from these men.
What King and his team DID, was go into racially charged towns where conflict was imminent and in an organized strategic manner they would “Negotiate. Demonstrate. And Resist.” They knew the cameras were on them and they knew that the formula of negotiating, demonstrating and resisting in the faces of racially bigoted people of power was almost certain to result in violence. And it was this violence, which when caught on camera and broadcast to the nation stage, would bring about the larger, macro-level, federal change that would force the hand of local and state policy.
This was such an interesting insight for me. It points to something that I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, which is the understanding of one’s purpose. The fact that King knew that his role in the civil rights struggle was not the same as the local college leaders, but in executing a strategy of “negotiate, demonstrate, and resist” to exact the biggest impact, was a lightbulb that went off in my head when watching the film. I think to say that the college leaders’ impact in their community is less important than King’s contribution is completely inaccurate, both sides are needed. But that’s the thing, in the fight for civil rights (and any fight that is worth the struggle) both sides are absolutely necessary.
In many ways this scene was a call to action for me to push to have a deeper understanding of what my role is in the battles that I fight as well. And like most everything it comes down to knowing what we ultimately want.
