Selma is the story revolving around Martin Luther King, Jr., and his historic march in Alabama in the height of the Civil Rights movement in 1965. Like any film, certain liberties were taken with fact in order to intensify dramatic tension.
Here are some facts and the fictions from the movie…
MLK AND LBJ
Fiction: Martin Luther King visits with President Johnson after a church bombing in Alabama and implores him to shift focus to the violence in the South. Johnson bristles at the notion at first, and the two battle it out until the very end of the film.
Fact: According to several LBJ historians, the president was much more openminded to the problems facing African Americans in the south. Several phone exchanges show Johnson being much more productive in conversations.
Fiction: Coretta King was sent evidence of her husband’s infidelity by the FBI, apparently directly from headquarters.
Fact: While the FBI did send incriminating photos of MLK, none of them came directly from headquarters, or the president.
Fiction: After King (David Oyelowo) accepts the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, a terrorist bombing of a black church in Birmingham kills four girls.
Fact: The church bombing happened over a year earlier, in September of 1963 compared to December, 1964.
JIMMIE LEE JACKSON
Fiction: Jimmie Lee Jackson (Keith Stanfield) is murdered by an Alabama state trooper while trying to protect his mother and grandfather from being beaten during a nighttime march in Marion, Alabama.
Fact: Jackson was shot twice by a trooper inside a restaurant he and his mother and grandfather had slipped into after their nighttime march on Feb. 18, 1965 was violently set upon by police and vigilantes. He did not die on the floor of the restaurant but stumbled back outside and was beaten to death.