Common and John Legend’s song, “Glory,” in the film “Selma,” recently won the Golden Globe for best original song, but a part of Common’s acceptance speech has people talking about more than just the win.
“I am the unarmed black kid who maybe needed a hand but was instead given a bullet,” Common said during his speech. “I am the two fallen police officers murdered in the line of duty.”
Common, a hip-hop star and actor, referenced the recent events in Ferguson as part of what awakened his humanity while on set of the civil rights movie, “Selma.” As the movie was released to theaters last week, comparisons continue to be made about the injustices that occurred in Selma and the recent riots and protests that are occurred in Ferguson, Missouri.
Selma retells the true story of the three-month period that Martin Luther King Jr. led a campaign to secure equal voting rights despite violent opposition. The most historical event during the campaign was the march from Selma to Montgomery Alabama, commonly referred to as “Bloody Sunday.”
In addition to the similarities drawn between Selma and Ferguson, similarities between Martin Luther King Jr. and Georgia Congressman John Lewis have been made. Especially after Lewis called for a “non-violent” protest across the nation when Officer Wilson was not indicted for the death of Michael Brown last November.
“I think a lot of reasons why John Lewis gets a lot of publicity at this moment and why his voice is so heavy is because he is one of the few people who is still living, who was acting at that time.” Gary Jones, multicultural and service learning coordinator, said. “He was very closely involved with [Martin Luther King Jr.], he was known as being one of the Freedom Riders, and so I do think that there are some parallels there and that his voice has some credibility.”
Jones leads a group of students on a civil rights tour during Spring Break, and every year they stop in remembrance at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where many demonstrated for civil rights.
“I think that one of the biggest differences is the fact that there is no modern day, dedicated face for a leader of a civil rights movement,” Jones said. “I think in the absence of that at this moment you have things like Ferguson, where what started as peaceful protests turning into other things. Because there is no leader, there is no centralized voice saying ‘no this is the way we are going to do things.’”
Oklahoma Christian University hosted guest speaker Conley Gibbs Jr., the minister of Ferguson Heights Church of Christ, as part of a Faith in Ferguson seminar on Dec. 7, 2014.
Junior Tyrell Johnson attended the event.
“You never think about what is going on behind the scenes, or what the media just isn’t showing you,” Johnson said. “And hearing Conley Gibbs say during ‘Faith in Ferguson’ that the churches are there and they are helping – it gave me hope. Maybe this isn’t going to snowball into something greater, but it also makes me suspicious of what else the media isn’t showing us.”
Gibbs said that the death of Michael Brown united ministers and churches, both black and white, which had not sat down together in a very long time, and the two churches worked together to help build back the community in Ferguson.
“We worshiped together, met together,” Gibbs said in his presentation. “That’s the kind of stuff the media is not going to show you.”
Though many things resemble the past with the situation in Ferguson, there are very key differences between then and now.
“One of the biggest differences in the 1950s and 1960s was the presence of the Church or, quite frankly, the Black church,” Jones said. “Most of the civil rights leaders were religious figures. I think that the lack thereof now does lend people to say that they are totally different.”
Gibbs called Ferguson the “modern-day Selma” after Officer Wilson was not indicted. President Barack Obama disagreed with the comparison, stating that the problems in Ferguson are not the same problems Selma had.
“To a degree, Selma was about racial and social injustice,” Jones said. “It was about taking nonviolent protest to just another level. …I think Ferguson speaks to an issue that is also social injustice, social economic injustice. But I think that it is very different to separate those issues from social issues just because of the demographics and statistics that our country quite frankly has.”
The movie “Selma” raises more awareness about Ferguson and all the social injustices that go on, sometimes unnoticed.
“You see things in the news but you only see one side of the story,” Caleb Bills, Oklahoma Christian alumnus, said. “Watching Selma there was so many different sides to every opinion, every action, every reaction. It was hard to watch that and think that our society and our country acted that way, it’s almost a wake up call to make sure we don’t ever revert back to those ungodly ways.”
0
0
Be First to Comment