Selma’s missing postscript

There’s a saying that period films aren’t about the period in which they take place, but the period in which they were made. That dramatic looks at past events are taken from a point of view influenced by current mores is, when you think about it, not a major revelation, especially when you remember that these movies are — no matter the number of real-life characters and events featured — works of fiction.

There can be no doubt the artists behind “Selma” were aware of the contemporary implications of their historical account. If it is not evident from the portrayal of the power dynamics inside the civil rights movement, inside elected government, and between the two, then it is brought solidly home by the music that rises over the end credits.

The song, “Glory,” a collaboration between John Legend and Common (who also plays James Bevel in the film), is a hybrid of pop, rap and gospel choir styles. “Glory” won the Golden Globe for best song and garnered one of “Selma’s” scant two Oscar nominations (the other was for Best Picture). The sound is contemporary and the lyrics more so, comparing events from the 1950s and ‘60s with 2014. “That’s why Rosa sat on the bus. That's why we walk through Ferguson with our hands up," intones Common. “Now the war is not over. Victory isn't won,” sings Legend.

Indeed. As the song makes clear, the struggle for equal treatment under the law continues, and nothing makes that any clearer than what has happened in recent years to the VRA. 

The effect that the Voting Rights Act of 1965 had on African-American enfranchisement — and on United States politics — was dramatic. Voter registration among blacks nearly doubled in just two years, with most gains coming in the south. The number of African-American elected officials in the south went from virtually zero to nearly 200 [PDF] in the 20 years after the VRA was signed, and rose even faster after that. African-American allegiance across the country quickly shifted from Republicans, a holdover from the days of Abraham Lincoln, to liberal Democrats, while white Southern Democrats, in office and in the general population, migrated to the GOP.

That realignment has, in the 21st century, provoked increased and increasingly partisan attacks on the 1965 law, as Republicans, especially in Southern states, have sought to combat demographic shifts with challenges to the enforcement provisions of the VRA. Court cases and congressional amendments chipped away at voting rights’ protections throughout the last dozen years or so, but the profound blow came in 2013 with the Supreme Court’s decision in Shelby County v. Holder.

At issue in Shelby was a provision in the VRA known as “preclearance.” Preclearance, as outlined in Section 5 of the Act, subjected specific states and electoral districts (most of them in the South) to oversight from the federal government. In areas with a history of voter discrimination, changes in election law, registration practices, polling place locations, voting days or certain district boundaries needed approval from the Justice Department or a federal court. The DOJ or the court had to “pre-clear” any changes before the new laws could take effect.

The enforcement mechanism for Section 5 is actually a formula detailed in Section 4(b) of the VRA, and while the Supreme Court did not directly overturn Section 5, a 5-4 majority wiped out Section 4(b) enforcement, effectively disabling preclearance as a tool for ensuring equal enfranchisement of minority populations.

The changes in previously protected sections of the country were swift and sweeping. Within quite literally hours of the high court’s Shelby ruling, laws were introduced in multiple states (most in the south, but not exclusively so) to pointedly restrict voter access. Though few public officials (there were some glaring exceptions) would say the new laws were designed to decrease African-American voter turnout, the end effect undeniably and disproportionately hit black communities (along with, in some places, other traditionally Democratic blocks, such as young and elderly voters).

Within a year of Shelby, voting laws changed in nine states previously covered by Section 5, as well as in five other states where some counties were previously required to seek federal approval. And turnout in November’s election reflected just the kind of shifts the VRA was supposed to guard against. While midterm participation dropped in most of the country, the downturn was disproportionately felt in communities of color.

It is entirely possible the November numbers were not in when filmmakers locked the text for the postscripts at the end of “Selma,” but the effects of the Shelby decision were already quite evident. It would have been simple, and seems in keeping with the movie’s broader objectives, to add a line or two to explain that even though the 1965 Voting Rights Act was signed in August 1965, and it had a dramatic influence on Southern black enfranchisement throughout the next 40 years, the Supreme Court‘s 2013 ruling had indelibly weakened the VRA. The struggle continues; “victory,” as the song over the credits tells us, “isn’t won.” In fact, some battles now must be fought again.

As Dr. King observed in his speech at the end of the Selma-to-Montgomery march, “Denial of the right to vote” was at “the very origin, the root cause, of racial segregation in the Southland.” After the Civil War, Southern politicians and the business interests that backed them feared a populist alliance between poor whites and recently emancipated former slaves, and so those with power re-engineered a segregated South around the myth of white privilege and the disenfranchisement of blacks to divide the lower classes, hold on to elected office and keep wages low.

“That’s what happened,” MLK said, “when the Negro and white masses of the South threatened to unite and build a great society: a society of justice where none would prey upon the weakness of others; a society of plenty where greed and poverty would be done away; a society of brotherhood where every man would respect the dignity and worth of human personality.”

Are those words not filled with profound resonance right now? Just as Johnson outlined a Great Society in his War on Poverty, and King increasingly turned his attention to economic inequality in the last years of his life, so, today, equal access to the ballot and equal opportunity are inextricably linked. The exclusion of some from the “full blessings of American life,” as LBJ called it, eventually drags down many more.

As King said that very day in Montgomery, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” Inside that long arc, however, are many injustices — injustices that sometimes seem to tilt the journey away from its righteous end. If the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act was a step, or even a leap, in the right direction — as the makers of “Selma” undoubtedly feel — then isn’t the film an opportunity to also note when the journey has been thrown into reverse?

President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law in 1965; the Supreme Court emphatically weakened it in 2013. Again, those in power move to implement “ingenious discrimination”; so, again, the battle must be joined.

It seems clear the people behind “Selma” wanted to say as much, but when given the chance to say so explicitly, and in a way that would not have seemed the least bit out of place, they stopped short. The movie’s most up-to-date postscript is missing — and it is missed.