DVD Available: AmazonAfter
a 5-year run with PBS Broadcast & Home Video,
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Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change |
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a one-hour documentary
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The year was 1965; the
place, Selma, Alabama. For decades, local laws had all but prevented
Blacks from voting.
Supported by Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., they decided to march to the state capital of Montgomery to draw attention to their plight. On a Sunday in early spring, the peaceful protesters on their way out of Selma were beaten back by state troopers. "Bloody Sunday" stunned Americans, focusing nationwide attention on civil rights. |
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A group of American nuns from St. Louis were among the first to protest the violence. At a time when church leaders were reluctant to address the treatment of Blacks in the South, these courageous women defied authority to take their message to the streets of Selma. These sisters were welcomed by the Black residents, due in large part to the decades of bridge-building by sisters from Rochester, New York who had met the education and health care needs of the poor Blacks of Selma. The Archbishop of Mobile-Birmingham had prohibited them from joining the marches, so they fed, housed, and cared for waves of civil rights activists from elsewhere. This is a story of "aggiornamento," a word Pope John XXIII used to describe the "updating" of societies resistant to change--and the story of the women who took it upon themselves to become the agents of that change. What did they change? How were they themselves changed by the experience? Forty years later, the women reassess their roles in the Civil Rights Movement. |
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Recent Screenings |
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Selma, ALCONGRESSIONAL PILGRIMAGE SPONSORED BY THE FAITH AND POLITICS INSTITUTESATURDAY, MARCH 2,
2013
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Washington, DCSMITHSONIAN ETHICS EDUCATION SERIESTUESDAY, SEPTEMBER
11, 2012
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Additional Funding
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Fiscal Sponsors
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