SELMA, Ala. (AP) – Oprah Winfrey and other actors from the movie “Selma” marched with hundreds Sunday ahead of Martin Luther King Jr. holiday to recall the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Their steps in tribute to King in Alabama came as key black members of Congress elsewhere invoked recent police shootings of young black men as evidence that reforms are needed to ensure equal justice for all.
Winfrey, a producer of “Selma” who also had a role, helped lead the march with the film’s director, Ava DuVernay, actor David Oyelowo, who portrayed King in the movie, and the rapper Common. They and others marched from Selma City Hall to the city’s Edmund Pettus Bridge, where civil rights protesters were beaten and tear-gassed by officers in 1965.
“Every single person who was on that bridge is a hero,” Winfrey told the marchers before they walked up the bridge as the sun was going down over the Alabama River. Common and John Legend performed their Oscar-nominated song “Glory” from the movie as marchers crested the top of the bridge amid the setting sun.
Winfrey said those who came to Selma were seeking to remember “Martin Luther King as an idea, Selma as an idea and what can happen with strategy, with discipline and with love.” Winfrey played the civil rights activist Annie Lee Cooper in the movie, which has been nominated for two Oscars, in categories of best picture and best original song.
“Selma” chronicled the campaign leading up to the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, and the subsequent passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.