Why Does New Film On Seminal Civil Rights March Cut Out Jews?

There has been much discussion in the media over the past week since the Oscar nominations were made public about Hollywood's alleged racism. Most of it focused on the fact that that the film Selma, about the historic 1965 civil rights march led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior – whose birthday we celebrate today as a national holiday – was nominated but its African-America director, Ava DuVernay, was not. But the biggest slight was done to history and truth by DuVernay, who smears President Lyndon Johnson in the film and completely removes King's Jewish allies.

Please click to enlarge:

Above and above right: Marching from Selma: John Lewis of SNCC, an unidentified nun, Rev. Ralph Abernathy; Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., Ralph Bunche (former U.S. Ambassador to the UN), Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. Heschel is removed in the film "Selma."

There has been much discussion in the media over the past week since the Oscar nominations were made public about Hollywood's alleged racism. Most of it focused on the fact that that the film Selma, about the historic 1965 civil rights march led by Reverend Martin Luther King, Junior – whose birthday we celebrate today as a national holiday – was nominated but its African-America director, Ava DuVernay, was not. In fact, the enire span of major Academy Awards nominations this year is lilly white – the first time that has been true for many, many years.

But what most of the media has not focused on is Ava DuVernay intentional distortion of history that damages what should have been a seminal film.

DuVernay reportedly turns Democratic President Lyndon Johnson into a near-enemy of King, when the truth is that he was an ally who went far out on the political limb to pass legislation – the Voting Rights Act, for example – and to take other steps to help African Americans. What Johnson did got Republican Richard Nixon elected president after him and drove many southern Democrats to either support racist George Wallace or vote Republican. Johnson backed the Voting Rights Act and took those other steps knowing all this could happen. But he did it anyway because it was the right thing to do. DuVernay removes these facts from the film and turns Johnson into a craven, weak near-enemy of King.

But that is not all that DuVernay removed from the film.

All of the rabbis who marched with King at Selma, including Abraham Yehoshua Heschel, have been excised, as if they were never there. According to reports, watching the film you would never know that Heschel was in the front row less than three feet from King. You wouldn't even know Jews played a role.

DuVernay defends her abuse of Johnson (and, presumably, her excision of Jews) by claiming it's her artistic license.

“My response is that this is art. This is a movie. This is a film. I’m not a historian.  I’m not a documentarian. I am an artist who explored history. And what I found, the questions that I have, the ideas that I have about history, I have put into this project that I have made,” DuVernay told the PBS News Hour. (Please see the ful interview below.)

But to distort the role of a US President and completely excise some of King's closest allies seems much more like bias.

Why DuVernay did what she did is open to interpretation. It is certainly art, even if it is wrongheaded and offensive to many.

But DuVernay cannot claim that what she has done is act responsibly, or that she has been faithful to the history she claims to be "exploring."

And, just perhaps, it is that unfaithfulness and those distortions that cost her an Oscar nomination she otherwise likely would have received.

Related: Professor Peter Dreier lists the rabbis DuVernay excised and explains the roles they played – and the price some of them paid – for supporting King and marching with him at Selma.

 

Comments

[redneck gadol]

Sounds like Ms. DuVernay hates white ppl & Jews. Certainly her right.

[Garnel Ironheart]

Perhaps she's mad at LBJ because right after getting Blacks the vote he accelerated the war in Viet-nam and sent lots of young Black men to their deaths there.

[Allan]

“All of the rabbis who marched with King at Selma, including Abraham Yehoshua Heschel, have been excised”

I agree that this is very wrong indeed. On the other hand, how many Holocaust movies ever give due credit to the many Black US Army soldiers who took part in the liberation of the concentration camps? Still, two wrongs don’t make a right.

[topshot]

My father, a liberal Jewish civil rights lawyer, often risked his life bailing out black men who had been victims of police brutality and who were arrested en masse at public gatherings protesting the lack of civil rights. He would have been appalled by the movie's omissions, but not really surprised.

[redneck gadol]

Breathlessly anticipating Gay_Frum_Jew's comments re: Shmarya's inclusion of "Seminal" in the headline.

[JACK]

Shmaryah
You should be the last one on this planet to complain against
Jewish bias.You don't have an exclusivity on Jew hatred .

[Jeff]

"My father, a liberal Jewish civil rights lawyer, often risked his life bailing out black men who had been victims of police brutality and who were arrested en masse at public gatherings protesting the lack of civil rights."

As I sometimes say, this is who we used to be.

You have every right to be as proud of your father as I'm sure you are.

[Hasidummies]

Maybe she feels like Rabbis do about women - that having rabbis in the photo would "desecrate the memory of the martyrs".

[sdr]

Of course African American servicemen liberated the camps BUT Jews were a driving force in the Civil Rights movement, often giving their lives for the cause. To purposefully exclude them is scandalous.

[Gay Frum Jew]

@redneck gadol

The written word "seminal" has my thoughts racing. How astute of you to think of me. Gallons of creamy white liquid. Gawd, do I need a cold shower. Don't confuse seminal with seminole, the Indian tribe in Florida. Love their erect totem poles...

[Rocky]

SR: Don't feel too badly about this "poetic license". It is done quite regularly in the movie business. Earlier movies about breaking the Enigma Code totally ignored the major role that Alan Turing played in building the code breaking machine. I guess the movie industry was not yet ready to deal with a gay hero in 2001.

If you saw the recently released "Imitation Game", you may have noticed the footnote at the end of the movie. The Turing Machine and its subsequent improvements probably shortened WWII by about two years and saved about 14 million lives. For Holocaust survivors who were near death at the time of the liberation of the camps (Buchenwald, Gross Rosen etc), the Turing machine meant the difference between life and death. The picture taken of Eli Weisel at Buchenwald in 1945 is one of the best known related to the Holocaust. Does anyone think any of these men would have survived until 1947 under these terrible conditions? If some of your older relatives survived the camps, it might be more accurate to credit a British pouff than God for their survival.

[dh]

Peeps is tired of being crackers, yo.

[tucsonjew]

The Jews also bankrolled the NAACP. And the thanks wr get.....?!

[Minna Roisa]

My husband and I are planning to see "Selma" this coming weekend. I'm very disappointed to hear that neither Rabbi Heschel nor any other rabbis are depicted in the film.
This afternoon we joined members of our davening community and many other shuls in marching through downtown Philadelphia as part of a larger racially integrated, interfaith coalition committed to sustaining Dr. King's agenda and applying his ideas to current social justice issues.

[anchell]

. . .again I'm some what confused by what is posited here when compared with the accompanying video interview, along with bits of footage from the film.

The footage clearly shows a collage of faiths, including an keepa clad rabbi linked arm in arm spearheading the first march across The bridge in Selma. If this is the alleged excision then I probably need some clarification.

As well, Mdme DeVernay tells us that her depiction of president Johnson could not legitimately be disassociated from the actions of the FBI at the time. I accept her honesty and forthrightness in this depiction of a truly seminal moment in the American Civil Right Movement.

[Reese]

Similar to the glowing FDR series on Public Televison that glossed over his lack of helping the doomed Jews in Europe during the Shoah.

[Minna Roisa]

I hadn't yet watched the interview between Ms. DeVernay and Ms. Ifill when I wrote my first comment. I just saw it now and I did see the man in the kippa, who may represent all of the rabbis and perhaps Jewish lay people who participated in the campaign. While Rabbi Heschel is an iconic figure in the Jewish community whom I feel should have a larger role in the film, I agree with Anchell that at least there is some recognition in the film that there was a Jewish presence in Selma.

[jake]

Yup we control the banks , stores, and newspaper in Selma.

[Rocky]

Reese: You probably have forgotten or never knew that Jews weren't nearly as popular in the US in the 1930's as they are today. Restrictive zoning against Jews and Negroes was quite common in the US in those days, even in the New York area.

If you think that FDR was supposed to risk his re-election bid in 1940 by issuing an executive order admitting the Jewish refugees from the "St. Louis" in 1939, you are quite naive. Even Jewish Hollywood went along with the anti-semitism of the time by encourging actors to change their names to make them less Jewish. In the movie "Casablanca", there is not a single reference to Jews, when in fact many of the refugees in Casablanca were Jewish, desperately hoping to get a visa for the US. The State Department in those days was a notorious hot bed of anti semitism and did what it could to slow down the approval of immigrant visa applications from German Jewish refugees. The ability of Polish Jews to snag a visa was very limited owing to the 1924 Immigration Law (Republican sponsored) which was deliberately designed to limit immigation from Eastern (Jewish) and Southern (Italian) Europe.

Prior to the US entry into WWII, the US Jewish film studios, in effect made a bargain with the devil, by making sure their movies were not offensive to Joseph Goebbels and his band of Nazi censors. Only Charlie Chaplin (who was not Jewish) dared to make a full length anti-Nazi movie, "The Great Dictator", before the US entry into the war.

And as another person noted a few days ago, FDR's New Deal was widely disparaged in Republican circles as "the Jew deal."

[Nachum]

Garnel: It's a myth that more black people served and died in Vietnam (per capita) than white people.

Allan: The "black soldiers liberated camps" is something of a myth too. Still, it's been repeated over and over. There was a whole documentary about it.

[anchell]

. . . I wonder whether we will ever reach a point in time when the history we are to teach our children will be effectively represented by the fact of the matter as we know them today.

[JessicaR]

I think there is too much being made of this issue. After all, lots of white people--Protestants, Catholics, and Jews--participated in this movement. As a member of an oppressed minority, the director may simply have felt a need to focus on African-American achievements. That doesn't mean she doesn't recognize or appreciate the contributions of others.

[anchell]

@ Nachum, . . . here we go . . . a prime example of how ignorance gets heaved upon more ignorance. Nachum, did you at least read this blog?

[Hasidummies]

Wrong, Nachum. Look on youtube. There are documentaries about black people liberating Jews.