What tactics were used in this scene by the city official to deny African-Americans the right to vote?

TOPIC: “Selma”
Watch the film Selma (dir. Ava DuVernay, 2014). As you watch it, pay attention to the particular scenes I’ve identified, which correspond to the questions below. Then respond to each of questions, referring to examples from the film:

Q1. At the beginning of the film (after the opening Nobel Prize award scene and the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church), Oprah Winfrey’s character Annie Lee Cooper (who was an actual civil-rights activist in Selma) attempts to register to vote. What tactics were used in this scene by the city official to deny African-Americans the right to vote? Besides the obvious, on-the-spot obstacles the official placed before Annie Lee Cooper, what potentially devastating economic/financial threat made against this woman?

Q2. The very next scene shows MLK visiting LBJ in the president’s office. The two are respectfully but uncomfortably at odds with one another. What were MKLs major concerns and what, specifically, did he want in terms of legislation and the backing of the president? What was the major point of disagreement between MLK and LBJ? And what are some of the other tactics MLK describes that the southern power structures are using to deny African-Americans the right to vote and the consequences?

Q3 At about the 56 min. mark, after the killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson and the subsequent speech by MLK in the church, there is a scene in a living room in which the civil-rights leaders are discussing the situation and planning their next moves. Identify at least four obstacles to voting that the men discuss. What are the social and political effects of the inability to register to vote, to vote at all? The Southern White power structure maintain this rigid system of denying blacks the right to vote, inventing all kinds of laws (or excuses) to prevent blacks from voting. This was even more important than issues such as desegregation or interracial marriage. Why?

Q4 One of the keys to MLK’s success was in transforming civil and voting rights from a regional (Southern) and racial (Black) problem into an American problem. How did he do this? What were some of his strategies and tactics, particularly in raising the consciousness of, or else political stakes for, George Wallace, LBJ, and the larger American public? How did they play out so effectively and visibly that fateful day on the Edmund Pettus Bridge?

* min words: 275

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