Selma, Lord, Selma 1999

Sheyann Webb, Jurnee Smollett, is a curious young girl in Selma, Alabama, who one afternoon, while playing outside with friends, spots Dr. Martin Luther King Jr entering Brown Chapel AME Church, signaling his arrival to help secure voting rights for Black citizens. Sheyann impulsively skips school to sneak into a meeting, where she meets the eloquent leader. He even reads a report she wrote about him and, impressed by her perspective, invites her to sing at a later meeting that night. The moment marks the beginning of a life-changing encounter with a movement that will shape her understanding of courage, courage that will come to define her growing sense of purpose.

After school, Sheyann and her friend Rachel meet a pastor named Jonathan Daniels, Mackenzie Astin, who is staying with Rachel’s family to help Dr. King. The local minister Father Whitaker warns him about the dangers ahead, but Sheyann’s mother, Alice West, scolds her for skipping school and then allows her to attend the gathering where she introduces Rachel to Dr. King. He imparts a simple, powerful lesson: when asked, “Children, what do you want?” their answer should be “Freedom.” Sheyann then sings Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around. After the visit, her mother tells her father about her interest in the movement, a development that makes him uneasy.

The next day, Sheyann again skips school to march, and the group discovers a cross burned down—Jonathan Daniels witnessed the Ku Klux Klan carrying out the act, but they can’t report them to the police since there are no active clans in the area. Dr. King prays before they start marching to the courthouse to register, where they are harassed by the sheriff, and he tells Sheyann to leave while arresting everyone else. When Sheyann returns to school, she convinces her teacher to begin teaching about freedom and mobilizes the rest of the school to join the marches as well. After Jonathan is released from jail, he, Jimmie Lee Jackson, and his friend Willie begin going around town to recruit more people to march.

Jonathan tries to persuade Sheyann’s dad, John Webb, Afemo Omilami, to join the movement, but he refuses after Sheyann’s older sister is arrested and sent up north. When Dr. King is released from jail, he proclaims, “We’re not going to take it anymore.” Later that night, tragedy strikes as Jimmie Lee is killed by troopers while trying to save his grandfather from a beating, and Dr. King holds a funeral for him.

Sheyann fears she might die during the marches, but her mother comforts her and reminds her to stay brave. To honor Jimmie Lee’s death, Jonathan organizes a march to Montgomery to present a petition to Governor Wallace protesting the unfair treatment of Black people. On Sunday, March 7, 1965, a day that becomes known as Bloody Sunday, Sheyann and the other marchers cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge en route to Montgomery and are attacked by police. Sheyann is traumatized, but Jonathan manages to get her home safely and her parents steady her resolve.

The next day in church, some marchers are hurt and frightened, yet Sheyann’s singing lifts their spirits. When President Lyndon B. Johnson announces the Voting Rights Bill, Dr. King and the other marchers vow to keep going, while Jonathan and Willie leave for Hayneville to recruit more people and are arrested for putting up signs.

Jonathan is eventually released, but the violence surrounding the movement continues to shape the community. On August 6, 1965, the President signs the Voting Rights Act into law. Sheyann later directs a youth program for children of all races in Montgomery, helping to sustain the legacy of the movement. The story notes that Rachel’s brother becomes a two-term City Councilman, and each year, on the third Sunday in February, a memorial service is held in Marion for Jimmie Lee. In 1994, the Episcopal Church canonizes Jonathan Daniels, placing him in its Calendar of Saints.