A bit of history for a Sunday Morning.

I watched the film Selma, last week. The film is about denying black people their constitutional right to vote. Ironically, there was already a federal law that made it illegal to deny a person the right to vote based on race, religion or color. However, there was no law that prevented a state from establishing discriminatory voter registration procedures that effectively prohibited black people from registering to vote, which effectively denied them the right to vote. At the same time, black people were fighting in Vietnam for America, they were not voting in Alabama. In other words, they were compelled to register for the draft, but were prevented from registering to vote.

I was disappointed at many levels and emotionally moved at others. I was disappointed that the characters portrayed by King, Wallace, Abernathy, LBJ and Hoover did not have more of a physical resemblance to the actual people. It seemed to detract from their on-film credibility.  I was emotionally moved that an issue as important as this issue was, was debatable at all by our politicians and most people, including me, did nothing to address it. But, then there was Vietnam too.

The film gave the impression that the FBI, led by Hoover, had tapped the phone of King. Hence most of what King said on screen was allegedly taken from actual transcripts from recorded conversations. I was disappointed the film did not address the phone tapping at all as an invasion of privacy issue by the FBI.
 
According to the film, LBJ and others were well aware of voter registration discrimination in Alabama, but did nothing to correct it.  In one White House conversation depicted in the film, both LBJ and Wallace acknowledged the unfairness of voter registration discrimination, but neither politician did anything to change it . Wallace simply refused. LBJ explained, he was too busy with Vietnam.

Eventually, LBJ folded to public outrage. The Selma incident resulted in the voting rights act of 1965, which made voter registration discrimination illegal. 

All White House conversations should be broadcast live so we could truly see the character of our elected politicians. It would be an eye opener.