Revisiting Selma 50 years after 'Bloody Sunday,' Gay Talese isn't very impressed

In 1965, Gay Talese covered Selma's "Bloody Sunday" for The New York Times, and he was "close enough to inhale some of the tear gas tossed by the sheriff's posse's people," Talese tells The Times in a new video accompanying his trip back 50 years later. It would be "foolish" to pretend we've conquered racism, he said, but "all we do now is beat up the dead horse that's called Selma." Reporters can find racism "every other city in the world, if they look for it."

Selma is one of those "isolated examples of atrociousness" that we mark history by, Talese added. "We told the world that this quarter of a mile is the story, and it has remained the story for 50 years. Nobody looks beyond the parameter of that confrontation," but the Edmund Pettus Bridge "is a bridge to nowhere," and Selma isn't better than in 1965, "maybe it's worse," he said. Still, "rising above it is possible." Read Talese's dispatch from Selma in The Times, and watch his rumination on the anniversary in the video below. —Peter Weber

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