DVD Available: Amazon 

After a 5-year run with PBS Broadcast & Home Video, 
this documentary is looking for a permanent home and funds to license the archival footage in perpetuity. 
Please contact
sistersofselma@earthlink.net

Sisters of Selma: Bearing Witness for Change

a one-hour documentary 
produced by

Hartfilms

and

Alabama Public Television

supported by

The Independent TV Service
of the Corporation
for Public Broadcasting

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.

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. 

Recent Screenings

Selma, AL

CONGRESSIONAL PILGRIMAGE SPONSORED BY THE FAITH AND POLITICS INSTITUTE

SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 2013
The DVD was played in the 5 coaches that carried the pilgrims from Montgomery to Selma.

Washington, DC

SMITHSONIAN ETHICS EDUCATION SERIES

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2012
The DVD was played in the 5 coaches that carried the pilgrims from Montgomery to Selma.


Additional Funding
Catholic Communications Campaign,  The Louisville Institute,
 Alabama Humanities Foundation

Fiscal Sponsors
National Voting Rights Museum, Selma;  Film/Video Arts, New York