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| Oprah Winfrey locks arms with David Oyelowo, left, who portrays Martin Luther King Jr. in the movie "Selma," Ava DuVernay, the director of "Selma" and rapper Common, far left, as they march to the Edmund Pettus Bridge in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., Sunday, Jan. 18, 2015, in Selma, Ala. |
SELMA, Ala.
(AP) -- Oprah Winfrey and fellow actors from the movie "Selma" marched
with hundreds Sunday ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, recalling
one of the bloodiest chapters of the civil rights struggle. Their steps
in tribute to King in Alabama came as key black members of Congress
elsewhere invoked recent police shootings of young black men as evidence
that reforms are needed to ensure equal justice for all.
Winfrey,
a producer of "Selma" who also had a part in the film, joined in
marching along with director Ava DuVernay, actor David Oyelowo, who
portrayed King in the movie, and the rapper Common, who also had an
acting role. They and others marched from Selma City Hall to the city's
Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights protesters were beaten and
tear-gassed by officers 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 amid the
setting sun.
Winfrey said the marchers
remember "Martin Luther King as an idea, Selma as an idea and what can
happen with strategy, with discipline and with love." Winfrey played the
civil rights activist Annie Lee Cooper in the movie, which was
nominated for two Oscars, in categories of best picture and best
original song.
"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 on March 21 of that
year and arrived in Montgomery days later with the crowd swelling to
about 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.
Lisa Stevens brought her
two children, ages 6 and 10, so they could walk the bridge that King
walked. "I wanted to bring my children here so they can know their
history and for them to participate in this walk," said Stevens, who
moved recently from New York to Greensboro, Alabama.
"It's
a part of their history and I think that they should know. Being that
we're in the South now I want them
to understand everything that is
going on around them," she said.
McLinda Gilchrist,
63, said the movie should help a younger generation understand what
life was like for those in the 1960s who sought to oppose
discrimination. "They treated us worse than animals," Gilchrist said of
the treatment of the original marchers at the hands of white officers.
"It
was terrifying," recalled Lynda Blackmon Lowery, who still lives in
Selma and was the youngest person to march there in 1965 as a teenager.
Now a 64-year--old mother and grandmother, she spoke Sunday in New York
of a harrowing experience of unarmed marchers going up against rifles,
billy clubs and fierce dogs. She has since written a memoir, "Turning
15 on the Road to Freedom."
For Monday's
federal holiday, some were recalling King's leadership in light of fatal
police shootings that have recently shaken the U.S., including the
death of an unarmed black teen last year in Ferguson, Missouri.
Eight
members of the Congressional Black Caucus joined U.S. Rep. William Lacy
Clay at Wellspring United Methodist Church in Ferguson on Sunday as
they invoked King's legacy. They vowed to seek criminal justice reform.
"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," the St. Louis Democrat said. "Not
just in Ferguson, but over and over again across this country."
Other
King events planned Monday include a wreath-laying in Maryland, a
tribute breakfast in Boston, Massachusetts, 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.
King's legacy also was being celebrated
at the church he pastored in Atlanta. The current pastor of Ebenezer
Baptist Church, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, said the annual King holiday
is a time when "all of God's children are busy spreading the message of
freedom and justice."
In the Sunday sermon,
Professor James Cone of New York's Union Theological Seminary urged
Ebenezer's congregation to celebrate the slain civil rights leader "by
making a political and a religious commitment to complete his work of
justice."
Warnock closed the service by leading singing of the civil rights anthem, "We Shall Overcome."
