January 24-25, 2015: Crowd-sourced Selma

[In honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day, this week’s series has focused on histories and stories salient to understanding and engaging with the life and legacy of one of our greatest Americans. For this crowd-sourced post, I decided to highlight a few of the many wonderful pieces that have been written about and in response to the film Selma—add your thoughts or reviews, please!]

I’ll start by highlighting one more time my Talking Points Memo piece from this past Monday.

Wesley Morris’s review of the film on Grantland was very much in the same vein as my thoughts.
As with this great Amy Davidson piece in The New Yorker.

The inspiring John Lewis wrote an op ed sharing his own thoughts on both the film and the histories it captures.

Public historian and scholar Devin Hunter wrote some first thoughts on the film here.

Lonnie Bunch, director of the African American History Museum, had this perspective on the film.

Scholar Brittney Cooper wrote a great piece for Salon.com on the LBJ controversy.

Film critic and historian Robert Jones, Jr. wrote an open letter to the film’s director, Ava DuVernay.

DuVernay screened and discussed the film (with the help of Henry Louis Gates, Jr.) here in Somerville.

The New Yorker published this wonderful portfolio of Selma pictures.

And We’re History published this piece by co-editor David Chappell on the past and present debates over the MLK holiday and the many historical and contemporary issues to which it connets.

Next series starts Monday,

Ben

PS. What do you think? Other responses or connections you’d add?