The world is filled with ironies, collisions of the past, present and future that sometimes happen in ways that seem to be almost spiritual. So it was with me last week. It all began when I read an article that featured the author’s choices of the most authentic historical films. I wrote down the titles on a small tablet where I keep notes of ideas that I want to pursue and one by one my husband and I began watching the movies each evening. 

We began with Cromwell and moved through old flicks like the nineteen fifties era rendition of Napoleon. We both agreed that the author of the article that I had read had made excellent choices in recommending movies that are incredibly representative of the times that they purport to examine. Each film was indeed exceptional so we stuck with our plan to view everything on the list one by one. Finally we reached the movie, Selma.

The very mention of Selma, Alabama conjures intense emotions in me. I was glued to the nightly news each evening during my high school years. I saw the efforts of the civil rights movement in the south where I lived. I cringed at the stories about Black citizens being denied entry into schools, restaurants, bathrooms and other public spaces. Even as a child of seven or eight years I had understood how wrong it was to make the Black people in my city sit at the back of the bus that my mother and I took on our ventures to downtown Houston. I questioned the signs on water fountains and bathrooms that segregated Blacks from the rest of us. It ruffled my sense of fairness and decency to see such things and as I grew older my resolve to help make things more just only became stronger. 

In nineteen sixty five I was a junior in high school and not yet seventeen years old but I followed the nightly news regarding the civil rights efforts with hopeful interest. Thus I saw with dismay what happened in Selma, Alabama on the William Pettit Bridge one Sunday when Black citizens attempted a peaceful protest march to shine a light on the flagrant attempts to keep them from being able to vote. I watched the brutality of the state troopers who attacked with snarling dogs, officers on horseback and batons that battered the heads of the people. I was in tears then and still become emotional when I think of that dreadful day. 

Of course Selma represented a turning point in the efforts to secure the right to vote for all people who are citizens of the United States. It forced President Lyndon B Johnson to respond to the issue with legislation that banned attempts to keep Black citizens off of the rolls. The old tropes of making Blacks answer ridiculous questions that insured that they would be turned down when the attempted to register were to be no more. 

Fast forward many years later to 2010 when I was a mathematics teacher in the middle age of my life teaching at a charter school where many young Black and Hispanic students worked hard to enrich themselves with an education that would lead to opportunities to attend college. At the end of each school year the freshman class embarked on a journey to some of the key Civil Rights sites including Selma, Alabama. I was eager to volunteer to be one of the chaperones because I wanted to see the places that had been so impactful in the story of our national tussle with justice for all. To me it was a pilgrimage. So I warned my students that I might become especially emotional in Selma and spoke of the feelings of my youth when I was only slightly older than they were.

The trip itself was like no other journey I have ever taken. Each place that we visited tugged at my memories but it was in Selma that I truly felt a sense of reliving history. We stopped first at the church where many of the plans for the march to Montgomery, the capital of Alabama, had begun back in nineteen sixty-five. As we walked down the sidewalk heading for the bridge we were followed by law officers in cars. Many of the Black students huddled around me quietly wondering if the people in the town were concerned by our presence. We were indeed a rather large group and must have seemed a bit out of place. 

Soon the William Pettit Bridge loomed before us just as it was in nineteen sixty-five. We could not see the other side because the road was curved into a kind of hill. It was only when we reached the peak that we were able to see what lay ahead. In our downward descent my emotions overtook me. I felt my heart racing and breathing became more difficult. Tears of remembrance welled in my eyes but I made no sound. I kept my feelings in check much as I always tend to do when I am with my students. 

Once we reached an open field where we gathered to get on the bus that would take us to Montgomery one of the students approached me and asked, “Are you okay, Mama B?” My lips quivered as I shook my head up and down and then he gave me a big bear hug as though he understood what we both were feeling in that moment. 

In 2020, in the midst of the pandemic George Floyd was murdered in Minnesota. Suddenly I received a message from the young man who had understood me so well in Selma. His request for me was simple. He asked me to be a voice for him and for his people. He understood that the cause of justice for our Black citizens was still in jeopardy. That is when I began to change the tenor of many of my blogs. They were no longer just happy pieces that made people smile. I lost many readers because of my defense of George Floyd and those who protested his death. 

Now in 2026, we have a president and a Congress and a Supreme Court that seems intent on taking our nation back to a time that was not great at all. They allow gerrymandering to go wild, eliminating districts that gave Blacks an opportunity to have representation. Only last week the majority of the court voted to restrict one of the key premises of the Voting Rights Act by noting that it was unconstitutional to create districts that assured Black citizens with representation. It was in my mind the most egregious setback in justice in the last one hundred years. In the state of Louisiana where one third of the citizens are Black the court ruled that districts aimed at giving them representation are unConstitutional. 

So here I was watching Selma only days after the Supreme Court ruling and my emotions ran free. I was sobbing not just in remembering what happened sixty years ago but in knowing that the efforts of so many brave souls are being undone one by one. I cried not just about the past but about the future of our nation. I felt a deep sadness in realizing that the efforts of so many brave souls are slowly being undone as lawmakers draw ridiculous lines to create Congressional districts that water down or outright eliminate the voices of individuals and groups who still long to be heard. Why can’t we get it right?