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Nearly 47 years have passed since Martin Luther King’s assassination, which helps explain why many Americans today lack familiarity with his life and legacy.
Most schoolchildren in recent generations have learned about Martin Luther King through their education. Yet textbooks alone cannot fully capture the magnitude of the transformative change he inspired across the nation. For those under 50, King represents simply another figure in American history. For those who lived through the 1960s, however—an era marked by widespread racial segregation in the South and pervasive racism elsewhere—King emerges as a towering American leader whose powerful message and unwavering dedication fundamentally altered the course of race relations in this country, a topic historians sometimes call the Original Sin of the American experience.
The film Selma chronicles Martin Luther King and his supporters’ campaign to dismantle Southern segregation despite formidable obstacles. We encourage younger Americans to view this movie so they might better grasp King’s achievements and understand what life actually was like during the early 1960s, recognizing his life as a genuine profile in courage.
At the same time, we hope the film reminds viewers that King’s work, though substantial, remains incomplete. Until this nation truly achieves a reality where every American is evaluated by the content of his character rather than the color of his skin, each of us bears responsibility for keeping Martin Luther King’s legacy alive and advancing his vision every single day.