Gay Talese, Henry Louis Gates, defend Ava DuVernay and ‘Selma’ the article reads: Journalist Gay Talese was one of several who offered vehement defenses against charges that DuVernay misrepresented history. Talese not only spoke at a swanky luncheon at the Metropolitan Club in New York hosted by Paramount Pictures and attended by the likes of Tina Brown, Norah O’Donnell, Harry Belafonte, Phylicia Rashad and Lawrence O’Donnell — a former New York Times reporter, he also penned a letter to the editor of the New York Times. “I have seen Ava DuVernay’s new film, ‘Selma,’ and I was also part of this newspaper’s team that covered the civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery in 1965,” Talese wrote. “In my opinion, there is nothing in Ms. DuVernay’s film that significantly distorts this historic event or the leadership role played by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.” Talese went on to quote from his own memoir, referencing his source, J.L. Chestnut, who had been one of King’s legal advisers. He quoted from Chestnut’s book as well. Here’s the passage from “A Writer’s Life” that Talese quoted: Before the march, Chestnut had admitted to having concerns that the promotion of black people’s rights were being politically exploited by the Democrats in the White House in order to allow President Johnson to singularly dominate the daily headlines, and Chestnut was then bothered by the possibility that ‘King was no longer the number-one civil rights leader in America; Lyndon Johnson was … and we’d been outfoxed and were in danger of being co-opted.’ … But the successful completion of the Selma to Montgomery march allayed all of Chestnut’s earlier anxieties. Speaking at the Manhattan Club, Talese said: “I was on the Pettus Bridge and I watched the mayhem, the madness of Sheriff Clark. She got it. I was there. I saw it. She wasn’t there, but she got it. When I was seeing the film, I was seeing what I truly remembered.” Historian Henry Louis Gates introduced DuVernay and offered his own defense of her work. He called the controversy over Johnson’s portrayal a “tempest in a teapot.”] read the entire article here washingtonpost/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/01/07/gay-talese-henry-louis-gates-defend-ava-duvernay-and-selma/
Posted on: Fri, 09 Jan 2015 20:28:10 +0000
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