Looking back at #Selma50, what has changed?

Retired Alabama State Trooper James Bonard Fowler, 77, center, plead guilty to killing Jimmie Lee Jackson in 1965 during a Civil Rights protest and will serve 6 months in jail. (Carr/AP)Add caption

In looking back at Selma we should be taking note of the role and function of police then and seeing what progress has been made with respect to their role in society 50 years later..In 1965 police saw protestors as LAW BREAKERS. They saw protestors as folks who were unruly, had a potential for VIOLENCE and thus needed to be contained, dispersed jailed and beaten.. Words like 'outside agitators' and 'troublemakers' were used to describe SNCC and used to describe Dr King. What has changed in 50 years?


 “What other people – besides Blacks – are asked to feel grateful for remaining in the same place economically, educationally and politically for 50 years?”

It's the Media. There is a reason why black people hate the media: they hyper-criminalize us.


After Selma, What's Next for Black America?  Without a new and relevant agenda, black America will continue to march in an endless circle of celebrations and parties while it languishes in a permanent state of despair.

So why is President Obama going to discuss payday lending on his trip to Birmingham that is closed to the public, you know, the only group of people in Sweet Home Alabama who voted for and continue to support him?

No matter how many Black people are shot down in the streets by cops, no matter how far Black people fall in the relative to whites in the economy, Barack Obama has always denied that racism is endemic to the United States. He amended that slightly, in Selma this weekend. “Obama now admits that racism had once been endemic to the country, but that it is now limited to Ferguson-like localities.”

Meanwhile, the Confederate Flag License Plate Case reaches the Supreme Court.  I thought the South lost the Civil War?

RedEye