Why Selma Still Matters: Honoring History in Storytelling

Why Selma Still Matters: Honoring History in Storytelling

As the anniversary of the Selma to Montgomery marches approaches, we felt it was important to pause.

In this episode, we reflect on the first march in 1965, the courage of the 600 marchers who were stopped before reaching Montgomery, and the turning point it became for voting rights in America.

We speak carefully and with humility. Selma is not our story to claim. It is part of American history that belongs to those who marched, who suffered, and who stood with extraordinary dignity in the face of violence.

We also share why Selma appears in “Forever”. When we updated the story to 1965, we made the decision to center a relationship that reflects the racial realities of that time, including the legal and social pressures surrounding interracial relationships before Loving v. Virginia.

This conversation is about remembrance, responsibility in storytelling, and why history still echoes today.

We hope you’ll watch, reflect, and honor the legacy of those who crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge.

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VIDEO TRANSCRIPTION

A very important day in history is going to be celebrated and thought about.

There were, I think, around 600 marchers. They marched, and the sheriff, his name was Jim Clark, basically had been deputized like every white male in the county that morning. So he not only was expecting something, but he was expecting to start something. And he did.

It was a very frightening time, a very powerful thing to watch on TV. I remember watching it. I was in my teens.

Well, that’s a giveaway. You watched it on TV. I was only almost four.

And I watched it on TV, and it was, in a sense, I think, a turning point. It certainly raised awareness of racial injustice, racial inequality, and racial abuse that had been going on since the days of slavery and didn’t stop. It didn’t stop once slavery stopped.

This march happened for a couple of reasons. Barry, we’re talking about this because it comes into the show. We’ll talk about that in a second. But first, I want to honor the day.

The initial march was to protest the murder that had happened a few weeks before of Jimmy Lee Jackson. But it was also about the need for voting rights, given Jim Crow in the South and all the horrible ways people were prevented from voting.

That story was developed in the movie Selma. It’s certainly not our story to tell. Do you know the story of Jimmy Lee Jackson?

All I know, and I’m sure many of you know it better than I do, is that he was in a café and they thought he was reaching for a gun, and he wasn’t. It’s a very common story these days, which is the most horrible thing about it.

But it’s also the most awe-inspiring thing about Selma.

Those things are still happening. Abuse is still happening. Justice is still happening.

But Selma showed people who were unafraid, who were ready to take control of their own lives and do that with extraordinary dignity.

It was a turning point where some people said, “I didn’t know this was happening.” And maybe that’s true. There were probably people in the North who didn’t know. But if you read history now, it’s pretty clear what was happening.

So how did it end up in a show like Forever?

That is the question.

Let me back up, because you weren’t there for the original iteration of the show.

In The Picture of Dorian Gray, there’s a story about Dorian and a woman named Sybil Vane. It was a class issue. He was much more upper-class than Sybil Vane was.

Sybil Vane was an actress. He sees her on stage in England in the early 1900s, falls in love with her, and they have an affair. She gets pregnant.

Then he betrays her, basically for the shallowest of reasons. He sees her again, and she’s so in love that she doesn’t act well anymore. For whatever reason, she’s just not very good. And he says he wants nothing to do with her.

And she kills herself.

For me, that was one of the least believable parts of the book, because it was so arbitrary. He turns on her, and it makes him seem incredibly shallow right from the beginning.

So when we started the musical and decided to update it to 1965, it made sense to have Sybil Vane come from a Black family. Class is still an issue. It always has been.

We like to say that we don’t have the kind of rigid class systems that Victorian England had, but we certainly had a racial issue.

So to translate the story for an American audience, and especially a modern American audience, that relationship became central to Dorian’s transformation. It becomes the moment where he starts turning into someone who is not such a good guy.

And you want to show that through the relationship between a white man and a Black woman.

So we decided to make Dorian a little less shallow and more idealistic in the beginning.

One of the things that drew me to working on the piece with you was the time period and what you just described. I love the way the story was updated to the 1960s.

It makes Dorian someone who could be open to a mixed-race relationship.

Historically, we know there were white marchers mixed in. So our character, at the start of the story, is in law school. It seemed natural for him to go down to Selma, Alabama, to participate in the march with friends from law school.

It reminds me a little of Mississippi Burning. Different story, but similar in that people went down to the South.

Within the story, though, we honor the history. It’s not about white people coming to help. He just happens to be there.

For plot reasons, you don’t really see him at the march that much. When he meets Sybil, who in our version is the daughter of a Black preacher who is marching, her father and brother can’t know who he is.

At that point, he’s not even Dorian yet. He’s Stanley Gray.

So he becomes incidental to the march itself. But he meets her there, and she becomes a key part of keeping people together when disaster strikes. When the tear gas and the clubbing start.

We haven’t staged that visually yet. We’ve only done readings and workshops, so we don’t know exactly how it will look on stage. But it’s very important to get it right.

I love that we include the George Wallace announcement. There’s a voiceover where he says, “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” It puts the moment in context.

That’s not why the show is called Forever, but it is part of the story.

Another important part is what ultimately happens to Sybil, which is incredibly sad.

Because of the pressures of the time and the music industry, there were performers whose careers were put on hold because they were involved in interracial relationships.

In the story, Sybil is from Selma, Alabama, and at that time, interracial relationships were illegal. This was two years before Loving v. Virginia, the Supreme Court case that ruled bans on interracial marriage unconstitutional.

It’s hard to believe that wasn’t that long ago.

From a legal perspective, things have changed a lot, and socially, things have changed quite a bit, too. But not everywhere.

There are still remnants of that history that show up in headlines today.

The important thing in telling that relationship was to be truthful about it. To show the period as it was and not sugarcoat it.

There’s a powerful moment in the show with the song “Crossing Over.” During the march, the police stop the song.

But the song picks up again in a moment of hope.

“Crossing Over” works on multiple levels. They’re crossing the bridge, but it also refers to reaching the promised land, heaven, freedom, and better times.
Another interesting part of the story is the pressure on both sides of the relationship.

Sybil’s father doesn’t want her to be with a white man, largely because he fears what could happen to her if people found out, especially in Alabama at that time.

At the same time, Dorian’s manager and record producer doesn’t want him involved with a Black woman because it could damage his career.
So the pressure is coming from both directions.

It’s a time in history that needs to be remembered. We can’t ignore it.

Sometimes it feels like parts of our history are being softened or forgotten.

The show doesn’t make this the main focus, but it reminds us of a time when these issues were right on the surface.

It’s difficult to talk about because it isn’t really our story or our history to tell. But in a small way, it is also part of our history, because when people who cared spoke up, it helped.

I hope people listen to this and think back on that time. Things are different now, but we’re not there yet.

Not in our country, and not in the world.