THE MARCH FOR FREEDOM

Ramsey Seikaly

Los Angeles -- With all the praise and self congratulatory reflections that culminated in the election of the first African American President, paid for by many Selma's in the march to civil and political equality.  We tend to forget faith having played a key role in this human drama.  For Dr. King was an ordained Southern Baptist Minister.  And faith played a crucial and pivotal part in ending a century of legalized segregation.  That it was faith that brought to an end the commercial viability of slavery rather than the industrial revolution, spurred on by the intolerance and indignity that ran counter to all that we believed and had fought for in the Revolution of 1776.

The march on Selma had become the rallying cry, ironically a hundred years after the most horrific war on American soil that pitted brother against brother, in a conflict that forced the destiny of our national heritage to fulfill the mandate professed by her founding fathers, that all men are, not were, but are created equal.  

It is in this volatile atmosphere of fear and defiance that an already panicked white southern power structure, seeing the approaching gail winds of change dug its heels for one of the last major battles of the civil rights movement, three years before a bullet ended the life of its conscious and leadership.  

Selma was not just a march but a movement brought about by the intolerable volatile treatment American citizens of color forced to endure at the hands of ignorance and bigotry.  It crossed all racial lines and divide.  It brought together people of faith, political differences, class and culture. For it was a march of humanity, a march of faith, a march affirming the fraternal bonds that link our disparity in the commonality of our human consciousness.  

We hope you will see this outstanding historical re-creation of the seminal moment in our civil history, that established the foundation for the most significant peace of legislation, which remains today the guardian of our civil liberty...the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  

If you haven't don so please go and see it.  Selma.

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