Fifty Years On, the Lessons of Selma are Still Being Learned

I was not born in Selma, Alabama, nor did I live there (although I was married at the Episcopal church there, in 1996). I did not take part in the Selma to Montgomery march, being born five years too late. I was not there to express outrage at the discriminatory tactics taken by Sheriff Jim Clark to block blacks from exercising their constitutional right to register to vote. I did not witness the brutality of the state police against the marchers at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge. I was not able to mourn the deaths of Jimmie Lee Jackson or James Reeb.

But as I sat in a theater today watching the outstanding and powerful new film "Selma," I wept - and my tears encompassed all the sorrow and outrage that, while missed in March 1965, are just as real and just as raw for many today as they were 50 years ago. Equally present, sadly, is the need for many to learn the lessons of justice and reconciliation that are strong threads running through what Dr. King called "the moral arc of the universe."

There is much that has changed. In just two generations, the racial slurs that I can recall one of my grandfathers using in front of me, even in my very early years, have been replaced by the joy of two young daughters who have friends based on love and the ability to share good times together and not upon skin color or background. My wife and I have taught them the importance of honoring and respecting the equal worth of every man, woman, and child. We have talked to them about the important rights prayed and fought for by men like Dr. King, John Lewis - a personal hero of mine and someone I am honored to have met - and millions of other men and women, and why they should be remembered.

Despite all we have done, however, how do we find the words to explain why people like Michael Brown, Wenjian Liu, and Rafael Ramos die so needlessly? How do we talk to them about why there are so many people in the world who have a difficult time accepting and loving as easily as they do? Why have they been taught to forgive and yet see others who cannot, who will not, accept, nor love, nor forgive?

On Christmas 1957, Dr. King delivered a sermon on love and forgiveness that I think is very applicable. He said,

This simply means that there is some good in the worst of us and some evil in the best of us. When we discover this, we are less prone to hate our enemies. When we look beneath the surface, beneath. the impulsive evil deed, we see within our enemy-neighbor a measure of goodness and know that the viciousness and evilness of his acts are not quite representative of all that he is. We see him in a new light. We recognize that his hate grows out of fear, pride, ignorance, prejudice, and misunderstanding, but in spite of this, we know God's image is ineffably etched in being. Then we love our enemies by realizing that they are not totally bad and that they are not beyond the reach of God's redemptive love.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the Selma march, as we remember those who were and are oppressed, those who struggled and fought and fight still, who lived and died so that the future might be born anew, all in the name of equality and justice, I pray that the Pettus Bridge is remembered not only as a symbol of how many steps we as a nation have walked, but how many miles we still have to go. May the lessons of Selma go on, and may the bridge serve as a tool for crossing the divide that still exists and bending the moral arc completely back to justice, equality, and reconciliation.