History and Hollywood and Selma.

Martin Luther King with President LBJ after the civil rights act was signed.

Harry Longabaugh is a famous American criminal. Who is he? You would know him better as the Sundance Kid, the character played by Robert Redford in the epic western, “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.” When he was aged fifteen, Harry travelled from Pennsylvania to the West and settled in a town later called Sundance, Wyoming. Most people would tell you that Sundance and Butch were gunned down in a hail of bullets in a Bolivian mountain village by hundreds of militia-men. However, a visit to the Sundance Museum will provide a different story. The Sundance Kid, according to locals, lived to a good age. Hollywood, as the saying goes, was economical with the truth.

This is hardly the first time that Hollywood has changed history to suit its purposes. Often, such changes are inconsequential. In the final scene of “The Green Berets,” John Wayne is seen watching the sun go down on a Vietnam beach. One quick look at a map of Vietnam will tell you that all Vietnam beaches face east, so the movement of the earth around the sun would need to be reversed to establish the Hollywood version.

The most ridiculous piece of fiddling with fact came in the move, “Krakatoa, East of Java.” The film tells the story of one of the deadliest volcanic events in recorded history. I have not seen the movie so cannot comment on how it dealt with the history. However, there is a problem with the film’s title. I, and pretty well any eight year old who looks at a map of Java, will tell you that Krakatoa is west of Java. What could have possessed the director or the film’s producers to want to make nonsense of basic geography?

Why have I got the bit between my teeth on Hollywood’s historiographical unreliability? Last week, I saw the film, “Selma.” Martin Luther King was portrayed as a highly intelligent, articulate leader who had his weaknesses and faults but was prepared to give everything for the cause of black civil rights. So far, so good. Even if the film’s scenes of violence perpetrated against blacks by white authority and associate thugs were exaggerated, there is sufficient evidence of what happened to the Freedom Riders in Mississippi and the children of Birmingham Alabama, where Sheriff Bull Connor turned Alsatian (German Shepherd) dogs on them in the full glare of television cameras, to accept that treatment of blacks was worse than deplorable.

However, according to the film, MLK had to persuade, cajole and threaten President Lyndon Johnson to pass the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Omitting the issue that in America, Congress, not the President, makes the laws, the role played by LBJ in achieving civil rights for the black community, as portrayed in the film, is both wrong and deceitful. The black American community never had a better friend and supporter in the White House than LBJ. He championed the passing of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, a piece of legislation that LBJ’s predecessor neither supported wholeheartedly nor had the ability to move it through Congress.

“Selma” suggests that LBJ felt he had done enough for African Americans by having the Civil Rights Act passed. It is important to record that history shows a totally different set of facts. In 1964, LBJ knew that had he tried to include voting rights in the civil rights legislation, the Southern Democrats in Congress would defeat any bill. So, LBJ exercised patience, preferring to wait for re-election before tackling the issue of black voting rights. There is ample evidence to support the contention that MLK was not only well aware of this but supported LBJ’s view.

The passage of the Voting Rights Act was tortuous. Getting a bill through Congress can sometimes be as difficult as threading a camel through the eye of a needle. There are committees in both Houses which have power to block any legislation and stop it reaching a floor vote. LBJ played politics brilliantly to jump all the Congressional hurdles and deliver the Voting Rights Act within five months of his inauguration.

Had Selma’s producers told the truth of the part played by LBJ, would King’s role have been minimised? The film could have shown how, even in 1965, a black man could work with the chief executive for the benefit of a minority community. Instead, LBJ has been depicted as recalcitrant and prejudiced, and worse, as someone who failed to understand the plight of African Americans.

So many people who see “Selma” will not know the real historical truth. This is a disservice to students of history and the black American community as well as all who advocate equality and civil rights. It is a pity that the film’s director and producers lost a great opportunity to tell the far more powerful, truthful story.