Selma: A Bridge Not Yet Crossed.

I hadn't cried in a movie theater before.

I've come close.  Times when I've had to hold it in, my hands clutching Alison, or even using my fingernails to create a counter-pressure.

I made it to the car after The Sixth Sense, but then Alison and I broke down, because of the scene where the young boy sees his grandmother.

I made it to the men's room after Bobby, the movie about the RFK assassination, but there I cried like a baby.  RFK to me represents the future path not followed.

And then there was Selma.  Not even the movie itself.  Just the trailer before Benjamin and I watched Interstellar.  I broke down completely.

Why?

It was an effective trailer.  No doubt about that.  But it wasn't just the trailer.  It was knowing that it wasn't over and that the bridge had not yet been crossed.  That what I was watching wasn't just history.  It was a struggle still going today.

I looked around at the others in the theater, and I knew they weren't getting it.  That what they were watching was just a piece of history to them.  I'm sure a good number were interested in seeing it, but I couldn't see that they were connecting to it in the way I was.

Have things improved since Selma?  Oh, yes.  But the bridge is not yet crossed.

We elect a President with African heritage, but many treat him as low as any President we have ever had, and with a measure of disrespect I have never seen before.

We extend voting rights, only to suppress them and set up road blocks in state after state, bringing back the stink of Jim Crow.

We incarcerate at terrifying numbers, much of it for minor drug crimes, much of it people of color, for drug use that is just as or even more prevalent in the white community than in others.

Our police force has become more militaristic, and authorizes lethal force at the drop of a hat, or as all too often, at the drop of a hoodie.  Whatever the facts of any particular case, the facts overall is that it happens again and again and again,  Young unarmed black men being shot dead by authorities.

We have open carry for whites.  They can bring loaded assault weapons into Chipolte's or Kroger, but a young black man has to be wary of even picking up a toy gun at Wal-Mart.

No, the bridge is not yet crossed.

And I weep, in sadness in anger, in frustration.

And I am just a middle-aged white CPA in the south.

I can't imagine what I would be feeling if I were African American.

Yes.  Alison, Benjamin and I are going to Selma.  We'll have a box of Kleenex with us, and our most fervent prayers.  Prayers that someday soon, we cross that bridge.

Pray with me, brothers and sisters.