OPINION: My Selma revelation

January 7, 2015 By Ben Krull Special to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Ben Krull is a New York City-based family law attorney and freelance writer. Photo courtesy of Ben Krull

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As a 55-year-old Jewish Brooklynite I need constant reminding about the injustices that law enforcement has dished out to African-Americans. Seeing the movie “Selma,” which chronicles a 1965 civil rights march in Alabama, was my latest opportunity to relate to the sense of injustice and terror that exists in the city’s black community.

The most tangible villain in “Selma” is Alabama’s racist police force. In a wrenching scene black marchers encounter police at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, where the peaceful protesters are set upon by club-wielding officers, who bash in skulls and smash limbs. The movie sequence is interspersed with actual film footage of the defenseless protesters scampering like terrified children from their relentless pursuers.

I have read about the crimes committed by law enforcement during the Jim Crow era, but never internalized the atrocities. Yet, seeing in cinematic fashion how police power can be so brutally implemented to maintain social privilege enabled me to temporarily feel the terror African-Americans must experience when events, such as the choking death of Eric Garner, make them revisit this shameful aspect of our collective past.

My reference point for understanding the response of blacks to racism is the Holocaust. I grew up steeped in the history of Nazi crimes and developed the haunting sense that what happened in Europe during World War II could happen here. The terror of anti-Semitism infiltrated my psyche even though I was born years after the Nazis departed and have lived in a country that is welcoming to Jews. I wonder how much more vulnerable I would feel if the Holocaust had occurred during my lifetime, in my homeland, without a penny of reparations having been paid, and with little effort having been made to prosecute the perpetrators.

“Selma” reminded me that African-Americans live in a country where an overt conspiracy between the courts and the police to oppress black citizens took place little more than a generation ago, with little effort having been made since to prosecute the law enforcement officials who engineered this crime against humanity. I imagine that African-Americans relive the conspiracy perpetrated against them every time police misconduct results in the death of a black person.

For African-Americans events such as the 1965 Edmund Pettus Bridge police riot must seem to speak to the present, but for most New Yorkers they are a sad chapter from a distant past. So long as this divide of perception continues movies like “Selma” will remain a necessary cultural event.