ADDED: Full text here.
The Americans who crossed this bridge were not physically imposing. But they gave courage to millions. They held no elected office. But they led a nation. They marched as Americans who had endured hundreds of years of brutal violence, and countless daily indignities – but they didn’t seek special treatment, just the equal treatment promised to them almost a century before.
What they did here will reverberate through the ages. Not because the change they won was preordained; not because their victory was complete; but because they proved that nonviolent change is possible; that love and hope can conquer hate.
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56 comments:
I though "Bloody Sunday" was 11/21/20?
Just how many Bloody Sundays have there been in history?
Probably the greatest day in the life of the Liberal Boomers except for the day the Beatles arrived and Woodstock.
I fully expect them to mention it 10 years from now.
I think all he knows about Selma he learned from watching the movie.
Did he credit it for being the catalyst that brought his parents together again?
I would just prefer that our next president be someone for whom the defining young adult memory was the fall of the Berlin Wall, not bad acid at Woodstock. Baby boomer nostalgia and self-love is beyond nauseating.
I love that scene in "Field of Dreams" where James Earl Jones' character is spraying Costner's character with the bug spray and telling him to go back to the sixties because there is no place for him in here in the future.
Baby boomers need to go away and leave the rest of us alone finally.
Dealing the race card again. That's okay, but it seems to me that the Bamster is alweays dealing from the bottom of the deck.
The Ferguson government debacle has been milked for pretty much all it's worth. All those "hands up don't shoot" politicos were espousing a lie. And yet here Obama comes again. Facts are stubborn things--which is why Obama likes to make up his own facts.
Trumpet we won't be so lucky. For the next 5 years we'll have to live through a ton of 50 year anniversaries as we relieve the 1960s and the Boomers golden age. Maybe after the 50th anniversary of Kent State in 2020 things will let up.
The future is going going to be impacted by Obama's on-going Amnesty and our open borders policy that lets in millions of migrants every year.
Looking back at "Selma" is Nostalgia.
Just how many Bloody Sundays have there been in history?
Eighteen.
It was a pretty good speech. I like how it cast the Selma marchers as the true bearers of the American tradition, and the cops and deputized whites as the garbage that needed to be overcome.
I think history has begun to bear that reading out, and in time, will take the same view of Ferguson, and our prisons, and of the kind of people who grumble about "playing the race card" while such obviously racial injustice is still tolerated.
Kiss my grits because Selma doesn't work here anymore.
Or was that a different spinoff of an adaptation?
I wonder if a white guy less than 10 years out of an elite college wrote that speech.
Keep in mind we're in the last 2 years of a 2-term president. People are going to be flying out the door for their next job and the competency of replacements is going to twindle rapidly. Massive rise in an already high level of incompetence.
Sell me a Selma selfie
The Selma march was about Blacks getting the right to vote in the South. The marchers won. America won. We all won. Blacks can vote now, in Selma, in Ferguson, in New York, everywhere in this country.
The people of Ferguson don't need the paternal hand of the Justice Department to change the way their government works. They have the vote, thanks to Selma and Martin Luther King and so many others. Two-thirds of the residents of Ferguson are Black. They can vote in a new city government, and the new city government can change the police department, if that's what the people want. If it's not what they want, Eric Holder has no business dictating to them, like a plantation owner of old.
We don't have a "perfect" union? No we don't. We have the national government we elected, flawed, bumbling, incompetent, dishonest -- it's ours, it belongs to all of us, and so does the blame. All of us.
What does Obama have to do with Selma - other than he's black?
Moose said...
What does Obama have to do with Selma - other than he's black?
3/7/15, 8:16 PM
Don't you remember the story Obama told about his miraculous conception? Selma is important because that moment inspired his mother to get the jungle fever for an African alcoholic who would soon abandon her and her mulatto offspring. It's a very inspiring story, and scientifically significant because it demonstrated how time travel was a reality- Selma having occurred in 1965, and Little Barry being born in 1961. Remarkable. But don't confuse the president with the truth, or spoil the narrative with facts.
Here's a few kind words for the white people of Alabama. In the end, their respect for a civil society trumped their racism. There were broken heads and occasionally even murders, but, demonstrably, the protesters were able to win the argument and in a non-violent way.......African societies have produced any number of despots and tyrants. Can you name one that was overthrown by non-violent protest?.......Non violent protests only work when you protest against the actions of non-violent people. If some fine morning a Nigerian MLK were to arise in Nigeria and lead peaceful demonstrations against the Boko Haram in Boko Haram territory, the he would be dead by afternoon.
I wish all of this meant something.
I am Laslo.
Laslo Spatula said...
"I wish all of this meant something."
I agree with myself.
I am Laslo.
They should raise all Black Children with the Dream to cure cancer.
Because then, if one of them did: Black People cured cancer.
That would be nice.
I am Laslo.
"What does Obama have to do with Selma - other than he's black?"
Obama is 1/2 black. His father was a Islamic Kenyan and he grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia before going on to Harvard. Other than having a dark skin he has nothing in common with the African-Americans who marched on Selma in 1965.
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
I doubt you can you can find a white liberal who truly, sincerely cares about the event. They've exploited African-Americans with such shameless rapacity that even they can't really give a shit anymore.
It's all political dumb show for the ignorant and aggrieved now. What a tragic squandering of the courage of others.
Never forget: the racists with the fire hoses and police dogs? Democrats. Rub their faces in it.
Trying to co-opt Selma with amnesty and illegal immigration is horrible.
Obama is 1/2 black.
Obama was a bumbling exchange student from Kenya looking for a green card. Barack looks nothing like the Kenyan. His real father is Frank Marshall Davis.
Bill Clinton claims to be sterile because of mumps, but Hillary has a child. Please review the photos of Webb Hubbell.
Full disclosure....my kids look like me.
but they didn’t seek special treatment, just the equal treatment promised to them almost a century before.
I wish we could go back to that.
Ok, Obama talks Selma but then black unemployment is twice the national average.. meanwhile Obama lets in illegals to take their jobs for the hope they vote Democrat.
All the while he talks about one thing, he does the other.
Ugh! Are we sick of this guy or what?
What is it with politicians using these short sentences to get that staccato effect? Half of both those quoted paragraphs are punchy little sentences that make it read, and undoubtedly sound, pompous and somehow shallow. It's supposed to be a political speech, not a bad attempt at copying Hemingway.
"So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly to the past."
I don't know, just seemed apposite.
"I think history has begun to bear that reading out, and in time, will take the same view of Ferguson, and our prisons, and of the kind of people who grumble about "playing the race card" while such obviously racial injustice is still tolerated."
Ask the Asian kids with perfect SATs, and who want to get into MIT or Harvard.
Well roost on the moon--to say that something is "obviously"--a racial injustice or "obviously" anything else is the first tell of a polemic rather than a rational argument.
I don't know that our prison system is "obviously" a racial injustice. If you can't do the time, don't do the crime.
I don't know that Ferguson (or at least Darren Wilson's shooting of "gentle giant" Mike Brown) was "obviously" a racial injustice. It seems that Eric Holder's own DOJ has exonerated Wilson in that matter.
One can have a rational argument using facts and statistics--but once you've decided that something is "obviously" so, you're starting with the conclusion---not the analysis that leads to a valid conclusion.
Are too many young black men in jail? Let's agree, for the sake of argument, that that is true.
The next question is "why are they there"? There are lots of possible answers to that question and one answer may well be racial injustice. But there are other equally valid answers, and experience teaches most folks that there's rarely just one cause for a particular event or condition.
Blacks and whites marched, were beaten and some even killed to secure the vote for black people. Yet in 2014 only 14% of eligible voters showed up for Ferguson's municipal election. The times they have been a changin'....
It was a good speech.
Obama's Best Speech. Fantastic !! He represents the minority Majority with his singular and universal voice of a people's continuous struggle against oppression. Laslo, you're out there, but your comment of Black's finding a cure for Cancer is relevant. Would be a remarkable cure, needless to say.
He didn't build any of that. Heck, it is his party that was doing all the beating....
Derbyshire suggests that the way to improve failing schools is to fill them with Korean kids.
You can read that as a prod to what would be actual black pride, if there were any.
Roost on the Moon said...
chickelit: Just how many Bloody Sundays have there been in history?
Eighteen.
Bloody Sunday (1965), a violent attack during the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama, United States - "In all, seventeen marchers were hospitalized; the day is now referred to as 'Bloody Sunday'."
The one above it in the list:
Bloody Sunday (1941), a massacre of [between] 10,000 and 12,000 Jews before the Stanisławów Ghetto announcement
"There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those of them who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire; separate for Germans and Ukrainians."
Perspective.
I just looked at the middle of this post without seeing the title and thought I was reading about the 70th anniversary of the capture of the bridge at Remagen: "The Americans who crossed this bridge were not physically imposing. But they gave courage to millions." Interesting that the same words work so well for both events. Wonder if Obama gives a damn about the earlier one, or even realizes that he personally (ancestrally) could as easily represent either side at Selma.
William sez: "Here's a few kind words for the white people of Alabama. In the end, their respect for a civil society trumped their racism. "
Ha!
The white Southerners were *forced* to abandon their racism by a dozen Supreme Court rulings, the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and (in the case of desegregation of schools) Eisenhower's sending of National Guard troops.
The Deep South had to be dragged kicking and screaming by the rest of the nation into accepting racial equality.
Moving speech, one that could speak to and for all Americans regardless of politics- with some judicious editing.
The not so subtle promotion of unions.
The shameless "Yes we can."
"the idea of a just America, a fair America, an inclusive America, a generous America" Yes, we're a giving people
"Americans don’t accept a free ride for anyone, nor do we believe in equality of outcomes..." Huh?
Interesting article in the WaPo about how Selma is an absolute dump comparable to Detroit or East St. Louis.
"What they did here will reverberate through the ages. "
Sorry, my distant cousin, but your atrocious stewardship of what they started, has already squandered all their gains and has set your people back significantly.
Your 8 years will go down as one of the greatest wasted opportunities in the history of the Republic.
Shame on all you lesser sons and daughters of greater mothers and fathers.
Where was the GOP?
Sinz52's criticism of my remarks is correct. The white southerners did have to be led kicking and screaming into accepting racial equality. But kicking and screaming is not the same as bombing and massacring, and they were led into accepting racial equality. It speaks well of the protesters that they used non violent methods of protest, and it also speaks well of the people against whom they protested that such tactics prevailed.......Think of how Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Vietnam, and other countries have resolved their ethnic differences. There were worse people in the world then the white Alabamans of 1965.
racial politics on steroids..get a grip.
This past week was the first time I've ever seen the events at Selma referred to as "Bloody Sunday". I always think of that name referring to Northern Ireland and the Troubles. It's all down to where and when you grew up, I suppose.
sinz52,
You're not totally right about that. What's not often talked about is white acquiescence to desegregation and/or support of it.
The Civil Rights movement was successful in large part because many, if not most, white southerners chose to give way. They had changed or were changing themselves.
My father was a high school principal in the deep South during integration. He actually received threats of being "run out of town" by some white folk. Yet, at the end of the day integration happened and my father and others weren't "run out of town".
At the time Selma was just another march and just another violent response to a peaceful protest. There were lots of marches, and a lot of violent response back then. I wasn't at Selma, but I attended protests and sang "We Shall Overcome."
What's with this "we" stuff, white man?
"Derbyshire suggests that the way to improve failing schools is to fill them with Korean kids."
Why would Korean kids want to go to failing schools?
It gives me the impression that Derb doesn't know much about 2015 Korea or Koreans.
Volkoh Conspiracy has an article by Will Baude in which Baude says:
Today, it would be impossible to obtain a federal court order permitting a five-day protest march on a 52-mile stretch of a major U.S. highway. Under contemporary legal doctrine, the Selma protests would have ended March 8, 1965.
If Selma is an absolute dump now, it is probably because the Air Force closed their training base there.
Fernandinande said...
Bloody Sunday (1965), a violent attack during the first of the Selma to Montgomery marches in Alabama, United States - "In all, seventeen marchers were hospitalized; the day is now referred to as 'Bloody Sunday'."
The one above it in the list:
Bloody Sunday (1941), a massacre of [between] 10,000 and 12,000 Jews before the Stanisławów Ghetto announcement
"There were picnic tables set up on the side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those of them who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire; separate for Germans and Ukrainians."
Perspective.
3/8/15, 9:09 AM
True, these Selma celebrators need to get off their high-horses.
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