Oprah Winfrey’s new movie “Selma” centers on a key moment in the civil rights movement of the 1960s — but also holds a mirror to the struggle in the age of Ferguson and Garner.
“You look out your window and see people protesting, and then look at ‘Selma,’ and it looks similar,” Winfrey tells the Daily News as protesters still fill the streets to protest police killings of unarmed black men.
“It’s a wonderful thing that people are protesting,” she adds. “When they say, ‘Enough is enough’ and ‘Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,’ that’s what (Martin Luther) King said (in Selma).”
“Selma,” opening Christmas Day, dramatizes how King (David Oyelowo) rallied peacefully in 1965 against Southern racism and Alabama Gov. George Wallace (Tim Roth) to get President Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) to pass the Voting Rights Act and ensure black enfranchisement.
The issue is close to Winfrey’s heart. The 60-year-old magnate, born poor in Mississippi, began as a Chicago newsreader 30 years ago before becoming a talk show host and, today, a multi-hyphenate mogul.
Her message of empowerment is part of everything she does, whether it’s one of her “Life You Want” seminars or a movie about oppression. In the current context, taking charge of your life means making yourself heard.
“I’m hoping that all of [the protests] will allow a real, honest conversation to open up about race in this country,” Winfrey says.
“Selma” includes actual news footage from March 7, 1965 — a day that became known as “Bloody Sunday” after troopers and police attacked marchers as they attempted to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge.
At a pre-opening event for the film — where the cast wore shirts bearing Garner’s last words, “I Can’t Breathe” — Winfrey said that “Selma” director Ava DuVernay’s use of footage from 50 years ago brought her “to tears.”
“This movie gets people’s attention because people (in the film) are walking across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, (just) as people are marching in downtown Manhattan,” she says.
Winfrey says that she’s not surprised that 50 years after the events depicted in “Selma,” race is still an issue in the U.S.
“Laws do not legislate people’s hearts,” she says. “I can believe that we’re still discussing it. I can. Yet we have made extraordinary achievements … black people in this country, extraordinary achievements.
“[Yet] these are the continued challenges that occur when some people have been raised to believe that other people are inferior.”
Winfrey often acknowledges the lessons she learned from the black leaders who paved the way — so as she watches protesters vent their anger, she advises them to recall how King and others channeled theirs.
“There are great lessons to be learned (from the civil rights battles),” she says. “Number one, there has to be clarity of intention. Then the question should be, ‘What do you want?’
“And then there needs to be leadership.”
Oyelowo says he equates the issues 50 years ago and today.
“In Selma in ’65, when it was voting rights, it was a ‘black problem.’ Once the Bloody Sunday attacks happened and the country saw those images, it became an ‘American problem.’
“Similarly, when it was about Ferguson, it was a ‘black problem.’ When the country saw the injustice of what happened to Eric Garner, it became an ‘American problem.'”
Winfrey co-produced “Selma” and appears as Annie Lee Cooper, a Selma woman who became an activist after being turned away from voting booths. She was later arrested on a specious charge that she hit a police officer during the protests.
Playing Cooper was one more personal connection for Winfrey.
“There was a newspaper story when Annie celebrated her 100th birthday in 2010 that mentioned she’d watch the ‘Oprah’ show every day with a tuna fish sandwich,” Winfrey says.
“I had said no, [but] eventually said yes, for Annie Lee — and for every woman and man in my history who walked to a registrar’s office and had to then go home, and then tried it again. I wanted to pay tribute to them.”
