*the song's title links to its YouTube video
Rarely does a film contain social truths and human insights that transcend the four corners of the cinema's frame to speak to the lives of all who bear witness to the events there within contained. Selma is such a film, and even more so a rarity in that it doesn't speak, but sings to its witnesses.
Midway through director Ava DuVernay's courageously uncivilized civil rights drama, an imprisoned MLK laments the fact that an African American man finally has the right to walk into a diner and buy himself a sandwich but that most African American men can't afford one. He goes on to describe ways in which black individuals were being restored to their naturally free state by America's government but were still bound in chains by America's society. The tragedy is that King's words could describe the state of many a minority today: legally able but not socially enabled.
The film closes with Dr. King speaking to a historical mass of men and women, made up of all races, about God's "Glory". A "Glory" that when fully shown, would truly restore man to his naturally free state (in ways a mere man-made government never fully could), bring victory to the downtrodden, and justice to the unfathomably wronged. Then John Legend's voice sings out to modern masses of men and women, made up of all races, made up of anyone who sat in a theater and underwent the transformative experience that is Selma up to that point, "One day, when the 'Glory' comes, it will be ours...".
The tragic social truth of human inequality was bettered but not solved through King's heroic efforts. As the credits roll, Legend and rapper "Common" remind audiences that the "Glory" has still not come. But man's hope is that "One day" when it does, the depravity of racism and hate will be eradicated through the "glorification" of a God who is love.
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