On this day, I have a dream: Cut the Bullshit….

I will wait to see “Selma,” on DVD, primarily because of Oprah Winfrey’s actions in this 2015 annual recognition of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. Oprah apparently chose to honor blacks this year, by participating in what appears to be a racially segregated commemorative march, with the British stars and the African-American director who were snubbed in the Oscar nominations.

Please note the emphasis is on black, not African-American. If anyone wants to learn what really happened in Selma, check out the New York Times of that era when the newspaper still was the paper of record.

You will learn, for example, that in 1965, the Rev. Dr. King invited among others whites like the late United Auto Workers Union Leader Walter Reuther, and Rabbi Joshua Heschel, to join him in the march from Selma, Alabama, to that state’s capitol, Montgomery. Rabbi Heschel was among those at the front of the parade at its start.

The Selma film apparently does pay homage to the white Rev. James Reeb, a member of Dr. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and Viola Liuzzo. The first was beaten to death on the streets of Selma. Mrs. Liuzzo of Detroit was killed, apparently by Klansmen after the March. Is the only good white a dead one? Goodman? Schwerner? John Brown?

The tension between a racially and religiously integrated civil rights movement and an all-black, all-the-time version has existed, at least since the late Kwame Ture in 1965 urged white civil rights workers to organize among their own, while blacks would do the same in their community. He rightly is credited with a call for black power—not the once valued racial integration of institutional life.

On the opposite side was Lyndon Johnson, the president who used to be the most honored by African-Americans I have known as a civil rights worker. That President’s stupid support of America’s War in and against Viet Nam cost him the respect of many, white and black, but what remains of his “War on Poverty” still is the best thing I will remember about my land in my lifetime.

Alas, in my home base of Gainesville, FL, the tension definitely is resolved in favor of re-segregation championed by local black boss Rodney Long, president and/or founder of the Martin Luther King, Jr., Commission; the African-American Accountability Alliance of Alachua County, FL (“AAAA”); Plan East Gainesville Development Board; the Alachua County Coalition for the Homeless and the Hungry; the Long Foundation; the Clinton Portis Foundation, Inc.; Rodney Long Holdings; Rodney Long Realty Services; Rodney Long Bail Bonds; and several others which may or may not be active.

Local residents will recall that the Honorable Mr. Long also was an elected City Commissioner, then mayor, County Commissioner, then chair. Mr. Long has long championed the position that his great education at famed all-black Lincoln High School was disrupted by the racial integration movement in 1970, 15 years after Brown v. Board. Long was bussed to Gainesville High School, where the white community did not welcome him with open arms. Yet nobody has played into white hands like Mr. Long.I f he did not exist, whites would have to invent him.

Under Mr. Long’s skilled leadership the annual local week-long MLK celebrations primarily at black churches, and community centers located in black neighborhoods morphs easily into Black History Month. Whites are welcome to march from the downtown power center to a community center otherwise rarely seen by them.

None of this could happen without white encouragement, especially from the historically white Gainesville Sun leadership, which publishes a weekly targeted to the black community Mr. Long favors. Spirituality (black, of course) is a primary ingredient of that weekly publication.

Blacks are not forgotten in the daily, on the obit pages, in mug shots, in activities common in the East Side community. In the old days, Florida dailies, like the Orlando Sentinel, regularly used pink or green Negro pages to serve the same purposes.

If it is not clear by now, I deplore this voluntary racial segregation which economically and geographically continues to favor the old-line white culture in the United States, in the South, in Florida.

In my experience as a journalist, and a civil rights worker, when blacks and whites worked together, things changed for the better.When populations are honored for their differences, that communal solidarity seems to get lost in the shuffle. Meanwhile, the whites who control every major local public and private (Chamber of Commerce) institution mold the community in their image.

My children and their children were encouraged by their parents to disregard race, religion, language, nationality, ethnicity, gender and almost any other category in their social and economic relations. My grandchildren and great grandchildren certainly seem to have benefited from that approach.

On this day, I have a dream. Cut the bullshit. Recognize how we are being manipulated by media—mass, especially, but social also—to remain separate and always unequal, in favor of the white wealthy folks and their token Oprah Winfrey.

It used to be Bill Cosby, but we all know what happened to him. I can wait to see the Selma fiction, whether or not it now is honored as the best film of the year, to make up for its lack of nominations.

Gabe Hillel (nee Kaimowitz), is an attorney, journalist and civil rights worker. He can be reached at: 352-375-2670  or [email protected]