Selma - Ava DuVernay - 2014

1. How did Dr. King’s leadership benefit Americans who were not black?

2. One of the basic tenets of nonviolent direct action is to make the oppressor face the inconsistency between the oppressors’ ideals and the oppressors’ actions. How did the Selma march use this principle?

3. Why was the brutal Sheriff Jim Clark valuable to Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement while the more restrained Police Chief of Albany, Georgia, Laurie Pritchet, who ordered his officers to arrest demonstrators gently and without hurting them, a danger to the Civil Rights Movement.

4. Ever since he moved into a leadership position in the Civil Rights Movement in 1954, Dr. King received frequent death threats and expected to be assassinated. The night before he was killed, he talked about his possible death in a speech. This was a time in America, after the assassination of President Kennedy, when death was a real threat to national leaders. Why did Dr. King persevere in light of the threats on his life?