Tag Archives: movie

Envisioning a More Resilient Future

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One reason I have long loved being an urban planner is that, ultimately, planning is about imagining a better future. Or should be, anyway. Although I was in my early thirties before I returned to school for a pair of graduate degrees in Urban and Regional Planning and Journalism (a very unusual combination, I soon learned), I was intrigued with the creative process as early as high school. At the time, I applied it mostly to writing, but I learned in college that creativity was valuable for just about any endeavor. Much later, I was enthralled when I read University of Chicago psychology professor Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s path-breaking 1990 book, Flow, a study of the creative process. By then, I was already in the throes of writing my own books and learning where my planning credentials could take me.

While most planners never write or publish books, we all are quite accustomed to producing plans, reports, and other documents for consumption by the public, public officials, and other decision makers. We learn how to present these materials and visualizations in public at meetings and hearings. Visual depictions, for example, of what a neighborhood not only is, but could become, are standard fare. Many of us learn to work with various kinds of visualization and design software that create renderings of future versions of boulevards and parks and other public spaces. What architects do for individual buildings, we try to do for entire neighborhoods and cities. In the process, we try to feed and amplify the public imagination for what could be, hoping to find options for improvement that will appeal to a public that may be looking for alternatives to an unsatisfactory or uninspiring status quo. Whole books and software programs, such as CommunityViz, have been devoted to sharing strategies with planners for accomplishing these visionary goals.

The written word and visualizations are two ways, often combined, for helping people see new possibilities or change the way they see the familiar. I have used them for decades, in evolving ways, to help people better understand my own planning specializations, hazard mitigation and disaster recovery. When a natural disaster such as a hurricane or earthquake has shaken a community’s assumptions about its own future, it can be time to think about rebuilding in a way that makes that community more resilient in the face of future events. I helped advance the idea of pre-disaster planning for post-disaster recovery, that is, thinking before a disaster even happens about what would expedite the recovery process and allow the community to emerge stronger and more prosperous than before. This has become known as finding the “silver lining” in the dark cloud of disaster recovery, building hope during a process that can take years or even decades in the most drastic situations.

Left to right, crew members Jim Schwab, David Taylor, and Kim Taylor Galway toast the film project at Royal Peacock, Sarasota, FL, June 18, 2023

Even when I left the American Planning Association (APA) at the end of May 2017, I largely envisioned a continuation of my hybrid journalistic and planning career in the form of books and teaching, for the most part, augmented by various consulting jobs. It was only after conversations with high school classmate David Taylor at the 50th reunion of our Brecksville, Ohio, Class of 1968 in June 2018 that another idea took shape. David, a Purple Heart Vietnam Veteran, had taken a very different path in life after recovering from war wounds, by becoming first a photographer, and later a videographer. After retiring from a marketing position with the U.S. Postal Service, he opened his own studio and has done film and photography work for veterans and environmental groups, as well as traditional assignments like weddings.

Dave had followed my career for decades, starting with the publication of my first book, Raising Less Corn and More Hell (University of Illinois Press), in 1988. As I grew into my role as a leader in hazards planning, he became fascinated with what planners do in that realm, regarding them as “unsung heroes” of the recovery process. Further conversations led to a visit to his home in Sarasota, Florida, in February 2019, which included a presentation at a Florida Atlantic University symposium in West Palm Beach, and eventually that fall into the idea of producing a video documentary about the role of planning in helping communities address threats from natural disasters and climate change. As chair-elect at the time of the APA Hazard Mitigation and Disaster Recovery Planning Division (HMDR), I took that idea to the executive committee, and they chose to sponsor the project.

Devastation from Hurricane Michael, October 2018. Photo by David Taylor

Thus began, for me, a new way of thinking about how to engage the public on these issues. I had no experience with film as a vehicle for this process, except as a viewer, but the idea captured my imagination. What can one do with film that would be different from the written word? As the script writer, how would I think about the narrative differently? Moving out of my comfort zone forced me to think even more creatively than usual, but I welcomed the experience because I sensed that it might give us a new way to capture people’s emotions and imagination around an idea whose time was overdue. The United States, and the world, were suffering ever more massive losses from natural disasters, in part as a result of climate change, and needed new ways to approach the problem. Maybe the kinetic visual impact of a film could help affect that, if crafted with the right forward-looking perspectives in mind.

It would not be easy, and I readily understood that. Moreover, the first question was how to pay for the project. Movies are inherently more expensive to produce than books, and involve at least as much work in most ways. But if we could pull this off . . . .

Fortunately, incoming chair-elect Stacy Wright was able to arrange a $5,000 donation from Atkins, a consulting firm, to start the ball rolling in the fall of 2019. I became chair of HMDR on January 1, 2020, but the COVID pandemic intervened within weeks and by March 2020, we had to shut the project down and wait for the best. It was the fall of 2021 before we were again able to move forward. We created a Video Project Advisory Committee to provide guidance on the project. It consists of leading voices in the hazards planning subfield. We also began to assemble teams of regional volunteers who could assist us with logistics and recommend leading planners for interviews and advice.

We chose to name the film Planning to Turn the Tide because of the metaphorical implications of seeking to reverse the growing tide of losses of life and property from natural and other disasters. Well aware of the impacts and trends of climate change, we know that the number and costs of America’s billion-dollar disasters has risen rapidly in recent decades. We also know that planning can make a difference.

Outdoor interview with Julie Dennis, owner of OVID Solutions (also a member of Video Project Advisory Committee) in Blountstown, Florida, July 2022. Holding camera is Kim Taylor Galway; to her left is videographer David Taylor.

In the meantime, we raised additional donations from other consulting firms* and won two small grants from the APA Divisions Council to help us get started. We announced our project in May 2022 at the APA National Planning Conference in San Diego and recorded interviews with leading hazards professionals at the Association of State Floodplain Managers annual conference two weeks later in Orlando. By mid-July, we had recorded 14 more interviews in the Florida Panhandle, mostly in Panama City, following the area’s recovery four years after Hurricane Michael struck as the first Category 5 storm to reach the U.S. mainland since Hurricane Andrew in 1992. In that visit, we had extensive support from both City Hall in Panama City and the Bay County Chamber of Commerce, which provided its board room for a recording studio for an entire day.

Local entrepreneur Allan Branch explains his restoration efforts at History Class Brewing in downtown Panama City, July 2022

By then, our main problem was that we needed an easy way for people interested in supporting the project to make donations. Fundraising can be hard work, but there is little reason these days to make it harder than it needs to be. APA worked with us over subsequent months to create a dedicated donations page where people could donate online. Because we were the first division in APA’s history to attempt a project like this, we were also the first to need such a mechanism, but by late March of this year, it was ready. The donations page, which you can also reach with the QR code below, channels donations directly to HMDR and tracks the donor information for us, so that we can recognize our supporters appropriately (unless they choose to be anonymous). You can help keep this project moving ahead by donating now, and I sincerely hope you choose to do so. You will be helping us sell the concept of resilient communities to America.

If you need more information on the project itself, visit our project information page. I will be adding new posts regularly as we continue our work, including short blog videos summarizing what we are doing along the way. Please stay in touch.

Jim Schwab

*Early Supporters:

Atkins

APA Divisions Council

Michael Baker International

JEO Consulting

Association of State Floodplain Managers (in-kind donation)

Jim Schwab Consulting LLC

OVID Solutions

Richard Roths, AICP

Clarion Associates

Punchard Consulting

 

What Makes Us Grateful

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Marybella at Lurie Children’s Hospital

People often lean toward traditional expectations of traditional holidays.  We expect them to unfold in predictable ways. It’s not just, for instance, that we know we should be thankful on Thanksgiving, but also that we have family traditions of a feast with certain preparations and foods and activities that are all part of what we anticipate. We relax with pleasure when we are able to follow the script.

Last year, seven months into a pandemic the likes of which our society had not experienced in an entire century, our expectations were tempered by the need for limited crowds and our awareness of those who had succumbed to COVID-19 who could no longer share a meal with us. This year, many of us reverted to accepting somewhat larger crowds, tempered by issues of who was vaccinated, but sought nonetheless to recover as much of that traditional script as situations allowed.

No one likes to have the holiday disrupted by sudden illness. I recall a Thanksgiving in 1990, when my wife and I were still relatively new residents of Chicago, because I suffered sudden illness. I don’t recall how I felt the night before, but I woke up that morning with a fever that reached 103°F., accompanied by some other miserable symptoms. I was in no condition to go anywhere or meet anyone. Jean simply ushered me to the car and took me to a hospital emergency room. Following x-rays, the doctor informed me I had pneumonia. He sent me home with antibiotics, and the next few days, as I recall, were less than inspiring. I was listless and tired, and I learned that pneumonia is an exhausting disease. I got it twice more in the next ten years or so, but never again.

On Wednesday of this past week, our daughter Jessica and her new husband Greg and their four kids arrived, but the youngest, Marybella, 7, was not faring well, coughing up mucus. Her behavior wavered between fatigue and her usual effervescent enthusiasm. Jean suspected something was wrong. On Thanksgiving morning, Jean convinced Jessica to let her take Marybella to a nearby emergency room, where she spent all most of the day. She updated us by phone. The doctors tested for COVID and ruled it out, as they did subsequently for respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). They ultimately concluded it was pneumonia and arranged for her transfer to Lurie Children’s Hospital. Jean joined her in the ambulance. Jessica took me to the first hospital, where I retrieved our car as well as the purse Jean left behind when she rushed into the ambulance.

The other nine of us, including Jessica, proceeded with a mid-afternoon dinner at Jean’s insistence, but afterwards I drove to Lurie to pick up Jean, and Jessica and Greg followed. They stayed overnight with Marybella, who occasionally got the chance to talk to her siblings by phone, and then stayed most of Friday. Jean ate a pick-up dinner of the ample leftovers once she was back home for the night.

That could have put a damper on Thanksgiving, and to some extent it did. We were all quite naturally worried about Marybella. Jean reported that she was in a critical care unit, with a doctor and nurse stationed outside her room. A playful kid, Marybella sometimes rang the bell that signaled a need for help just to try it out until the nurse made clear to her that it was not a toy and she should not use it as one. Despite a heart rate reaching 170, possibly a result of panic during episodes of difficult breathing, her lively attitude was still apparent.

Jessica reported that Marybella also expressed gratitude toward her brothers and sisters, grandparents, and everyone around her. Being hospitalized, with all the attendant tests and medicines, has a way of focusing a young mind on the people who are helping her endure a crisis.

Not that she and her siblings have lacked reason for grief and anxiety this year. Their father died in ambiguous circumstances in late February. Like other students across the nation, they were attending school remotely at the time. They moved and changed schools in the fall. Life has been rather unstable, but they are seeking to regain their bearings.

Marybella’s challenge made me think hard about my own perspective in recent days. I have been busy, which is one explanation for a lack of recent blog posts. I was approached in early November with a new short-term consulting assignment that needed to be completed by the end of the month. That pressure was lifted slightly this past week with the extension of a federal agency deadline, but I have other work that will easily occupy my time until mid-December and perhaps beyond. I had looked at Thanksgiving as a chance to relax for just a day or two, but that was not going to happen.

As if one illness were not challenging enough, the parents took another daughter, Shanaila, to the Lurie emergency room on Friday evening, bringing her home at 5 a.m. Saturday after doctors determined she has strep throat and prescribed antibiotics. She slept well into the afternoon. What a weekend.

Meanwhile, we had five teens and tweens in the house needing attention while Jessica and Greg spent time with Marybella. On Friday morning, I found an intriguing idea in the Chicago Tribune, which included, in its Arts & Entertainment section, a glowing review of King Richard, a new movie about Richard Williams (played by Will Smith), the outlandishly ambitious father of international tennis stars Venus and Serena, who defeated the odds associated with raising five daughters in impoverished Compton, California. The movie has been billed as a tribute by the daughters to their persistent but deeply principled father. I consulted with Jean, and we decided it was a good bet for entertaining the kids in the late afternoon.

When I announced that we would attend a movie after they helped us clean the house, the first reaction was a question: What movie? This is a gang still hooked on Marvel Comics and superhero films, so there was puzzlement when I mentioned King Richard, a movie they had not even heard of. But Lashauna, a high school freshman, mentioned she had done some sort of school project about Serena Williams, although she still thought the idea behind the movie sounded “lame.” A movie about the father of two tennis players promised none of the high-powered action and special effects of the Batman and Superman films that dominate the box office.

“Just try it,” I said. “It might be better than you think.” Even a “lame” movie, however, provided adequate motivation to help clean a room or two in exchange for a trip to the local theater.

King Richard, in fact, has dramatic action. Williams defends his daughters by confronting gang members in the ghetto, gets beaten up more than once, but steadfastly pursues his audacious plan to turn his daughters into world champions with the help of coaches persuaded by his determination and, more importantly, the dynamic talents of Venus and Serena. The movie ends after Venus, at 14, nearly defeats the reigning top seed in her first major tournament, attracting enormous media attention and rich corporate sponsorships. Despite family squabbles, the gratitude of the two daughters for their father’s overarching vision for their futures becomes the dominant outcome of the story.

Once we were back home, with Marybella still in the hospital fighting to regain health—she suffered some lung damage at birth that complicates matters—and with the parents staying with her for a second night, I asked what they all thought of the movie and why they liked it. Lashauna admitted it was a good movie and that her assessment that it was “lame” was premature. Her sister Shanaila liked the fact that Venus became the first female African American world tennis champion. Jean, a retired teacher, liked the fact that Richard Williams insisted that his daughters get A’s in school as a condition of playing tennis. I simply liked the positive reactions to my choice of movie. Young adults do not alter their perceptions of life in snap decisions. It occurs one movie, one story, one mind-shaping event at a time. As a mere grandfather, I keep trying.

As I write this, I am plugging away at professional and personal tasks in a very different way than I had planned just a few days ago, and my expectations for the coming week remain positive, but tempered by a new experience. I too keep learning something: When God throws you a curve ball, learn how to change your swing. You may adjust enough to hit one out of the park, but you may also learn to be thankful just for reaching first base. You may also learn that gratitude sometimes resembles the smile on the face of a young girl in a hospital bed, fighting pneumonia but happy to be alive.

Jim Schwab

Beyond Tradition and Empire

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The Republic of Botswana, a paragon of progress in today’s Africa, did not start life with any apparent advantages. In fact, the former British protectorate of Bechuanaland, which became independent Botswana, appeared in the 1950s to have bleak prospects, in no small part because of archaic British colonial policy. Nearly surrounded in the post-World War II period by South Africa, which was in the process of establishing its notorious apartheid policy, the colonial backwater of South-West Africa that later became independent Namibia, and the white-run Rhodesia that morphed into modern Zimbabwe, Bechuanaland was a sparsely populated land of desert and scrub that seemed fated to be swallowed by more powerful neighbors. Yet today it is both one of the most prosperous of African nations and a functioning democracy, although like any nation it has its flaws and shortcomings. But it has maintained an uninterrupted series of democratic elections since independence, a claim few African nations can make.

Seretse Khama. Image from Wikipedia

Seretse Khama. Image from Wikipedia

A curious and stunning piece of personal history lies behind the story of Botswana’s independence, which occurred in 1966. The heir to the chieftainship of the Batswana people, the nation’s predominant ethnic group, was in London in the years after World War II to study law while his uncle ruled the nation as a regent. The British had established their protectorate in 1885 after King Khama III had appealed to them in the face of rising threats from South Africa and other neighbors. With a population at the time of little more than 100,000 (now 2 million), Botswana would have been helpless in the face of invasion. Moreover, Botswana had mineral resources, including diamonds, that made the country a potentially attractive target. In the midst of all this, Seretse Khama (David Oyelowo), heir to the throne of this fragile country, managed to fall in love with an English working woman, Ruth Williams (Rosamund Pike), a typist.

A United Kingdom, a movie based on the book Colour Bar by Susan Williams, tells the story that followed from this unlikely romantic adventure. It is a little difficult at first to fathom exactly how these two become so strongly attracted to each other, but the story is based on real life, so we know they did. It’s just that it would be nice if the movie did a somewhat better job of making clear how that happened. It is clear enough that in post-war England, prejudice against black Africans remained widespread. Knowing this makes it important to better understand how Ruth Williams found the courage to face down family disapproval and societal racism to decide that, when Khama proposed to her on a London bridge, she was prepared both to move to a poor rural African nation and to assume the role of an African queen.

The disapproval occurred on both sides. Khama’s uncle, Tshekedi Khama, wanted him to divorce Willliams, and failing that, wanted to send him into exile to spare the country division over the issue. Khama refused to do either and insisted, against the advice of the British officials, most notably Alastair Canning (Jack Davenport), the condescending British liaison to Bechuanaland, that the case be presented to an assembly of the people, then all male. (It should be noted that Canning never existed. In the film he is a fictitious composite of various British colonial officials.) But in this format, we can already see the seeds of modern democracy in Batswana culture, an open forum in which people could hear and judge for themselves. Following the uncle’s denunciation of the marriage, Khama passionately makes his own case for remaining both king and the husband of his English mate, and after some tense moments of thought, the men side with him. Uncle Tshekedi moves on to form a new settlement where they no longer need to live together.

But then the machinations begin. British diplomats, worried about South African ambitions and opposition to interracial marriage, work behind the scenes to oust Khama anyway. Khama turns out to be no one’s fool; he notices that mining explorers are on Batswana land without permission and quietly enlists a British journalist to investigate, and it becomes clear that his nation may both be resource-rich and the target of those who would exploit it before Khama can assert the nation’s right to control those resources, which ultimately turn out to be diamonds. Meanwhile, the British are using the dispute between uncle and nephew to manipulate the situation for their own geopolitical advantage.

The story that follows shows both the workings of democratic dissent in the United Kingdom (the movie title is clearly a play on that name with reference to Botswana) and the dishonest nature of imperialism. Labor Prime Minister Clement Attlee seems bent on catering to South African wishes despite opposition within his own party. British officials lure Khama to Britain to negotiate a settlement, then ban him from returning for five years. Amid all this, the king and his wife must endure the burden of prolonged separation while she is pregnant and gives birth in Bechuanaland to their first child, a daughter. We watch her convictions and commitment grow as she blends in with the people she comes to love despite the skepticism many first felt about her.

Back in England, meanwhile, Winston Churchill, in a bid to return to power as prime minister, promises publicly to return the young king to his throne. Once his Conservatives regain a narrow majority in Parliament, however, he reverses course and declares a lifetime exile for Khama. Despite widespread adulation of his role in the fight against Hitler, there was a dark side to Churchill that wanted to cling to the glory of the declining British Empire. Increasingly desperate both to reunite with his wife and to save his country from these designs, Khama finally manages to get permission to return for one week to meet with his uncle and settle family affairs. Khama uses that opportunity brilliantly by convincing his uncle of the need for national unity. Overcoming the weight of tradition, they agree to forsake the traditional monarchy and seek independence with free elections, upending the British ban on Khama’s rule and setting the stage for eventual separation from the UK within the Commonwealth. In due course, by 1966 Khama was elected the first president but honored democratic principles and set the stage for a much better history than most other African nations have experienced. Moreover, the nation has largely lifted itself out of poverty, with average annual income rising from about $70 per year to nearly $20,000 today. A Texas-sized nation in southern Africa, two-thirds of which is Kalahari desert, has grown a substantial middle class and educated its citizens. Somewhere, there is a moral in this story. It strikes me that the moral centers on courage and leadership and vision, which are often in short supply in this world.

And all that means this movie deserves more attention than it will likely get, but I’d like to hope that it will get that attention anyway. It is a powerful antidote to much of what we still see happening in the world today. It reminds us that one can stand for dignity in politics and make change accordingly. And while you’re watching A United Kingdom, enjoy the dramatic South African scenery, the lively romantic plot, and the brilliant acting. It is a movie, after all.

 

Jim Schwab

Deepwater Horizon

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I have just returned tonight from seeing Deepwater Horizon at the movie theater. It has been a while since I used this blog to review a movie, but I feel compelled. This one, I am willing to say, is well worth your time and money. Peter Berg, as director, has done an outstanding job in using special effects to recreate a realistic sense of the disastrous chaos that ensued when BP’s Deepwater Horizon drilling platform exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, ultimately spilling more than 5 million barrels of oil over 86 days before the leak was plugged. Mark Wahlberg stars as Mike Williams, a leading member of the crew, along with Kurt Russell as Jimmy Harrell.

I will not dwell here on the details of what happened, which are well documented and readily available on numerous websites about the worst oil industry accident in American history. On the evening of April 20, 2010, the rig, owned by Transocean, exploded and burned as a result of a blowout deep below the water’s surface. BP owned the drilling rights in the area, known as the Macondo Prospect. Eleven men died, and numerous other workers were seriously injured. Billions of dollars of damage to the Gulf Coast environment ensued, resulting in a huge political backlash that ultimately entailed pressure from the White House on BP to establish a $20 billion fund to compensate victims including the states and communities affected by the oil pollution that spread across the Gulf.

The entire environmental and political story might make a good movie and certainly is great material for a documentary, but that is not the focus of the movie. Nor does it have much to do with my recommendation. Instead, the movie calls our attention to the intense human cost of the event among the workers themselves and their families. The value of the stunning special effects is not to make the event surreal, as in most Hollywood productions, but to make it all too real. For most of us, the events of the Deepwater Horizon spill are abstractions, and most of the television news coverage featured polluted shorelines and bayous, tarred and dying birds, and similar scenes that typified the larger impacts of the accident.

In contrast, Deepwater Horizon the movie draws our attention to the traumatic experience of actually working on the rig and exposes us to the tensions between Transocean workers and BP officials. The high human cost among the crew, involving not only physical suffering but traumatic escapes from the burning platform, are the less well understood aspects of the entire event, but the movie makes you feel those impacts at a very intense and personal level. I will admit it forthrightly: the movie left me with tears in my eyes as I began to absorb the horror that unfolded and almost surely left most of these people scarred in the deep recesses of their souls. Several, the movie indicates, never returned to sea or the oil industry again, but moved away from Louisiana and moved on to other things in their lives. It is worth remembering the high price they paid for the shortcomings of BP management.

 

Jim Schwab

March to End Injustice

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On this weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, my wife and I spent last night watching the movie Selma before going out to dinner. Produced by Oprah Winfrey, who also plays the part a Selma protester, the movie focuses on Dr. King’s leadership of the March from Selma to Montgomery for black voting rights in Alabama, which resulted in 1965 in the passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act that effectively ended the devious practices of southern officials in denying voting rights to black citizens. \

It is an uplifting movie, as one would expect, and I highly recommend it. The movie deserves more than the two Oscar nominations it received, but getting justice in Hollywood has always been a curious game of inside politics. It is not worth probing further in this forum.

Like most movies about a key piece of history, one gets far more out of the movie by knowing something about the events it portrays before watching it. The movie, however, rises above such demands to deliver a powerful message about the realities of segregation and the uncountable ways in which it was designed to crush the human soul. Early in the movie, Oprah’s character, having filled out a voter registration form, goes to the county registrar in Selma to register. The officious clerk first asks if her boss knows she is coming to the courthouse to “create the fuss.”

“No fuss,” she replies, “I just want to register to vote.”

He then asks her about the preamble to the U.S. Constitution, which she recites perfectly. Determined to find a reason to deny her, he then asks how many county judges there are in Alabama. Sixty-nine, she says, and he grimaces. “Name them,” he says, and when she cannot, he stamps DENIED on her application. She leaves, knowing that further discussion is futile. The only thing that will change the outcome, she realizes, is peaceful protest.

I won’t go into great detail about what follows; go see the movie, please. Suffice it to say that, when the protesters in the first attempted march attempt to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, local sheriff Jim Clark orders them to disperse in two minutes or face the consequences. They stand firm, and in short order, officers are flailing away at protesters with billy clubs, splitting skulls and breaking bones. Others on horses chase them down on the way back across the bridge, in one case letting a whip fly. All this is based on the striking reality of the brutality of Clark’s deputies in the historic march.

What anyone with an ounce of decency must wonder, however, even with the hindsight of history, is what motivates the kind of hatred and fear that causes men in uniform to unleash such violence against unarmed protesters seeking one of the most basic human rights in the world? How does anyone develop such animus against fellow human beings? I can almost understand simple cowardice in not confronting such people, but I find it impossible to understand the actual perpetrators of such injustice. For the life of me, I have never understood how any of them could reconcile such behavior with the Bible Belt Christianity they claimed to profess—especially given that Christianity was at the root of Dr. King’s movement.

But the movie is about more than that. It is also about the epic struggle of King, played by David Oyelowo, to motivate President Lyndon B. Johnson to accelerate plans to introduce voting rights legislation at the federal level. There has been a debate about whether the movie fairly portrays Johnson, though it is clear from all historical records that he was a master political manipulator who may well have resented what he saw as his own manipulation by this then 36-year-old Negro preacher. In the end, however, Johnson, who had only the previous fall won the Oval Office in a landslide of epic proportions, was not going to be left behind by the tide of history.

To forestall action by Johnson, amid legal battles over the rights of the protesters to march in Alabama, Gov. George Wallace visits the White House. There ensues what I regard as one of the most intriguing, and surely accurate, scenes in the movie involving Johnson, who asks Wallace why he is “doing this,” that is, using the powers of the state to prevent blacks from voting. Wallace pretends that he has no authority over the county registrars who are preventing blacks from voting, and Johnson is blindingly blunt and direct: “Are you shittin’ me? Are you shitting the President of the United States?” He asks what people in 1985 (not to mention 2015) will think of the stances they took in 1965, but Wallace professes not to care. Johnson ends the conversation simply: “I don’t intend to go down in history alongside the likes of you.”

In the end, as we all know, he not only did the right thing, but by November 1965, with King at his side, signed a landmark law with strict enforcement provisions that permanently changed the political landscape of America. Those who died at the hands of racist murderers, and those whose skulls were cracked and bones were fractured by merciless Alabama troopers and police, had something to show for their courageous sacrifice.

As I said, just go see the movie. If you think of yourself as a brave individual, match your courage against that of those who marched. You may find yourself aspiring to do better. I did.

Jim Schwab