'Selma' Distorts History by Airbrushing Out Jewish Contributions to Civil Rights

[oberliner]

When filmmakers choose what to include or exclude from the stories they tell, their choices often have repercussions beyond the drama on the screen. In films based on real-life events, omissions can seriously distort the way we remember the past. “Selma,” a film directed by Ava DuVernay, offers an ambitious portrait of Martin Luther King by zeroing in on a pivotal moment in the black voting rights struggle. The negative way in which President Lyndon Johnson is portrayed has already sparked significant controversy, but the narrative strategy of the film leads to a glaring omission that has not yet surfaced: the contribution that thousands of white people, many of them Jewish, made to the Civil Rights Movement.

http://forward.com/articles/212000/selma-distorts-history-by-airbrushing-out-jewish-c/#ixzz3PedOQ21T

Curious if folks who have seen the movie would agree with this.

[randr]

1. Could this be the root of the Oscar snub?

[Bjorn Against]

2. I saw it and I would not agree

The quoted excerpt in the OP says that the movie ignores the contributions of thousands of white people and that is blatantly false, the movie shows large numbers of white people show up in Selma to participate. I don't think the movie ever mentioned that some of those people were Jewish, but you can't expect a movie to go over the backgrounds of all participants in the space of two hours.

[BeyondGeography]

3. Rather than reinvent the wheel, I'll go with this commenter

Our community is usually quick to object when other groups try to make the Holocaust less centered on Jews. We're right to do so. Likewise, we ought not try to make Black American history about us. That Jews were involved in the civil rights movement in various ways is a fact, and one that reflects well on those individuals. But that fact also remains basically marginal to the overall story of that movement. It's an interesting footnote, not a major plot point. We shouldn't expect the filmmakers to bend over backwards to force us into its narrative just to soothe our egos.

Read more: http://forward.com/articles/212000/selma-distorts-history-by-airbrushing-out-jewish-c/#ixzz3Peg4K7rs

[oberliner]

4. That makes sense

I do think an interesting movie could be made, though, that does focus on the way the two communities worked together during this time.

[treestar]

7. I don't think there should be any objection

to a movie or documentary about gay people or gypsies in the Holocaust. Facts are fact.

[kelliekat44]

8. Jews were also key in later getting affirmative action EEO laws rolled back. We don't highlight that.

[bemildred]

12. That's about right.

However progressive Jews were both prominent and important in the Civil Rights movement, some were killed IIRC, so it is not out of line for them to want credit.

[dballance]

13. So great!

I looked at the comments on that article and most of them seem to be along the same line. Yes, Jewish people were integral to the Civil Rights movement but none of those involved at the time wanted to be front and center. They were valiant supporters who did not seek any recognition.

[el_bryanto]

5. There was a good article at salon about this - well more the LBJ thing but it's applicable here too.

Being more accurate does not mean one has told more truth. Read any Toni Morrison novel, and you’ll learn that novels often tell far more truth than autobiography. DuVernay tells us many truths in this film about the affective and emotive dimensions of black politics, about the intimacy of black struggle, about the spirit of people intimately acquainted with daily assaults on their humanity. The recent tragic killings of unarmed youth have surely taught us that if we don’t work from a presumption of black humanity, facts don’t mean very much in our interpretation of events.

More than that, those in power choose the “facts” that matter.

What I hope those D.C. high school students and every high school student that will get to see this film learn is that ours is a beautiful struggle. I hope they learn that despite our defeats, we’ve had our triumphs, too. I hope they see how integral women were to this struggle. I hope they have a clearer picture of what revolutionary leadership looks like – that these people ate and slept, loved and fought, shaved and got help putting on neckties, struggled with the right words to say and sometimes made mistakes. They rose to meet the challenges of their times. And we can, too.

Maureen Dowd’s clueless white gaze: What’s really behind the “Selma” backlash by Brittney Cooper. Well worth reading.

I am planning on seeing it tomorrow, personally. I doubt it is a complete history, but what is? If people want to see movies where white people save black people, there are plenty of movies like that.

Bryant

[treestar]

6. Did it mention which ones were Catholics?

Some of them likely were.

This is absurd. It's not about white people, Jewish or not.

[frazzled]

10. Yes, it does portray clergy of other denominations

"Selma" does show that the Selma-to-Montgomery march involved a significant number of white supporters. The film also reveals that many white clergy, wearing clerical collars and other religious garb, participated in the Selma events. In one scene, King is seen hugging a Greek Orthodox prelate (surely meant to be Archbishop Iakovos) who made his way to Selma. Another scene shows a group of white segregationist thugs beating and killing James Reeb, a Unitarian minister from Boston who came to Selma to join the march.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/selmas-missing-rabbi_b_6491368.html

The Rabbis, although mostly Reform, did wear yarmulkes, to show they were clergy and to show the variety of religions that were there, so perhaps the film could have included this.

From the same source:

But missing from the movie is any depiction of even one Jewish rabbi participating in the Selma crusade. Among white activists in the civil rights movement, Jews - secular and religious -- were disproportionately involved. But rabbis, mostly from the North and California, were particularly visible because they usually wore yarmulkes at rallies, meetings, and protests. Rabbis were part of the lunch counter sit-ins, the Freedom Rides, the 1963 March on Washington (where Rabbi Uri Miller gave the opening prayer and Rabbi Joachim Prinz spoke prior to King's "I Have a Dream" oration), and local efforts to integrate schools and challenge racial discrimination in housing. In 1964, King asked his friend Rabbi Israel Dresner of Temple Sha'arey Shalom in Springfield, New Jersey to recruit other rabbis to participate in a protest campaign in St. Augustine, Florida, a hotbed of segregationist resistance. All 16 rabbis, including Dresner, were arrested for engaging in civil disobedience.

But in the front row of the march, only two persons to the right of King (with Ralph Bunche between them), was Heschel. Captured in an iconic photo with his long white beard and yarmulke/beret, he looked like the stereotype of a Biblical prophet. The photo also shows the marchers in the front line incongruously wearing flower leis, which a minister from Hawaii had just given them.

Anyone familiar with the events at Selma is aware of that photo and of Heschel's presence. All film directors have the artistic freedom to decide how they want to portray historical events, but Heschel's absence from that scene in the movie could not be an simple oversight.

Indeed, King called Heschel "my rabbi." In many ways, Heschel was an unlikely activist. His transformation from Talmudic scholar to civil rights and anti-war protester is a remarkable story on its own.

[frazzled]

9. My rabbi was there with Dr. King in Selma

He returned from that march and spent hours telling us about it, and what he learned, and what we should know about race and justice. It was one of the most formative experiences of my young teenage years.

Along with my wonderful rabbi, Maurice Davis (deceased), here is a list from another recent article on the subject:

Most of the rabbis who came to Selma represented Judaism's Reform wing, the most liberal of the factions within organized Jewry, but a number of rabbis from the more religiously traditional Conservative wing joined them. In addition to Dresner, the marchers included rabbis Maurice Eisendrath (president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations), Albert Friedlander (rabbi for Jewish students at Columbia University), Herbert Teitelbaum (who led a congregation in Redwood City, California), Gerald Raiskin (Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, California, Joseph Gumbiner (director of UC-Berkeley's Hillel), Joseph Weinberg (Congregation Emanu-El in San Francisco), Saul Berman (Berkeley's Congregation Beth Israel), Mathew Simon (spiritual leader of a Los Angeles congregation), Steven Riskin (New York City's Lincoln Square Synagogue), William Braude (Temple Beth-El, Providence, R.I.), Saul Leeman (Cranston Jewish Center in Rhode Island), Nathan Rosen (director of Brown University's Hillel), Maurice Davis (Indianapolis Hebrew Congregation), Arthur Lelyveld (Cleveland's Fairmount Temple), William Frankel (Beth Hillel Congregation, Wilmette, Illinois), Sidney Shanken (Temple Beth-El, Cranford, N.J.), Allan Levine ( Temple Emanuel of Rochester, N.Y.), Andre Ungar (Temple Emanuel of Pascack Valley, N.J.), and Perry Nussbaum (whose synagogue, Temple Beth Israel in Jackson, MS, was bombed in 1967).

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-dreier/selmas-missing-rabbi_b_6491368.html

[dembotoz]

11. The trouble with sorta historical movies is that over time they become viewed as historical fact

civiL war shaped by gone with the wind

ww2 shaped by all the john wayne movies i ever saw....

lord knows the movie titanic was gospel accurate.

when it comes out on dvd in a few months it will be used by history teachers all over the land
as part of the lesson plan on the civil rights movement.

the teacher prob will not issue footnotes of where the movie is inaccurate.
it will be viewed as a documentary

and that bothers me

at least the harry potter movies were close to the book....