‘Selma’ Controversy Grows Over LBJ Clash with Martin Luther King On Civil Rights

The Wrap ^ | 1/2/15 | Alicia Banks

[illiac]

Historians take issue with director Ava DuVernay focus on former president Lyndon B. Johnson

Days away from the wide release of “Selma,” a controversy around the film is gaining steam as historians take issue with its depiction of president Lyndon B. Johnson clashing with Martin Luther King, Jr. over voting rights.

In a lengthy New York Times story about historians taking issue with the movie, Diane McWhorter, the author of “Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama: The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution,”argued Thursday that the movie is not truthful in depicting LBJ (played by Tom Wilkinson) fighting King on staging protests in Selma.

“Everybody has to take license in movies like this, and it can be hard for nit-pickers like me to suspend nit-picking,” she told The Times. “But with the portrayal of L.B.J., I kept thinking, ‘Not only is this not true, it’s the opposite of the truth.’ ”

[BeadCounter]

If the LBJ library is concerned that a movie is depicting his treatment of MLK wrong, it makes me doubt a lot of the other muck we hear about LBJ, could be true. Then, maybe it’s not.

[fieldmarshaldj]

There you go again.

[MasterGunner01]

President Lyndon B. Johnson and the majority of the Democrat Party were all about Civil Rights — NOT. The Democrats believed then, as now, that every good Democrat should own a Negro. Democrats felt Negroes were second class citizens and not equal to whites. Democrat politicians of the day like Police Chief Bull Conner, Governor George Wallace, Senator William Fulbright, Senator Robert “KKK” Byrd, and Senator Al Gore, Sr. were segregationists and racists of the worst kind.

[Jack Black]

Know the enemy. These are the people who are going to tell lies about an American president to gin up racial grievance. It's not a mistake, it's a plan.

Ava DuVernay - the director.

Ophrah Winfrey, producer.

Other money contributors to bringing these lies to the people:
Nik Bower ... executive producer
Christian Colson ... producer
Ava DuVernay ... executive producer
Dede Gardner ... producer
Paul Garnes ... executive producer
Jeremy Kleiner ... producer
Cameron McCracken ... executive producer
Diarmuid McKeown ... executive producer
Nan Morales ... executive producer
Brad Pitt ... executive producer
Oprah Winfrey ... producer

[laconic]

You know as well as I do, the “press” only gives a damn about a political scandal if it involves a conservative Republican.