Selma, the movie and the message by: Milan Hamilton

"Selma," the new film about the civil rights struggle, is igniting a struggle of its own over who deserves credit, or blame, in the events of 50 years ago that are depicted in the movie.

Some have taken issue with the portrayal of President Lyndon B. Johnson. Former LBJ administration officials are crying foul, saying that the portrayal of Johnson distorts and tarnishes the record of a man who had become an ally in the fight, committed to the goal and focused on how best to achieve the goal, given the role of Congress and outside forces. Johnson's legacy has been over looked with the quagmire of the Vietnam War, and his supporters hope to burnish the image of his presidency by highlighting his efforts in passing the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But the movie shows Johnson as worried that the fight for voting rights will endanger the chances of success for other items on his Great Society agenda, and he pressures the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to wait. When King is adamant, the film implies that Johnson even allows J. Edgar Hoover's FBI to pressure the civil rights leader by sending his wife, Coretta Scott King, supposed audio recordings of King having sex with another woman.

I think this is very interesting because it shows the people that everyone has different views on how history took place. There are many bias in the world and it almost impossible to be able to tell the exact way that anything in history took place because certain facts and information could be exaggerated or even left out to make it look better or worse depending on the circumstances. I personally believe that the way LBJ was portrayed in the movie was very accurate. It showed that while he agreed with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s point of view, he believed he had more important things to take care of as the president, hence the probable reason why it took so long for the Voting Rights Act to be passed. Since everything is made with a slight bias, one has to think, how true are the history books we are learning from?

 http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/08/opinion/brazile-selma-the-movie-message/index.html