Blog | Is this 2015 or 1965? NAACP building near Denver bombed, “Selma” in theaters soon
This is a weird way to begin 2015:
An improvised explosive device was detonated against the exterior wall of a building housing the Colorado Springs chapter of the NAACP on Tuesday, officials said.
The explosion knocked items off the office walls but no one was injured.
Agents from the FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went to the scene after the blast to gather evidence and place markers.
The FBI said that a gasoline can was placed next to the device but the contents did not ignite.
According to the the FBI, officials are seeking a "potential person of interest," described as a balding white male, about 40 years o;d.
"He may be driving a 2000 or older model dirty, white pick-up truck with paneling, a dark colored bed liner, open tailgate, and a missing or covered license plate," the FBI said in a statement said.
The explosion was heard near the building on the 600 block of South El Paso Street on the southern end of the city just before 11 a.m. Those nearby reported hearing a "loud boom."
And in a matter of days the movie “Selma,” which depicts a critical, bloody protest during the Civil Rights Movement, will be in theaters soon and is receiving Oscar buzz.
Too bad the movie took poetic license with President Johnson’s relationship with Martin Luther King Jr.:
A controversy has emerged in the last two weeks around the civil rights film Selma, though not entirely the expected one, as LBJ historians and aides have criticized the film for falsely portraying President Lyndon Johnson as resistant to the idea of voting rights, and even suggested that Selma was “LBJ’s idea.” Director Ann DuVernay called the latter claim “jaw dropping and offensive.”
On Sunday morning MLK aide Andrew Young(played by André Holland in the film) told Up with Steve Kornacki that neither side had it entirely correct.
“President Johnson did not say ‘it had to wait,’” Young said. “He said, ‘I have a great agenda.’ …We did not expect him to commit. We were really kind of letting him know that we had to pursue voting rights. His agenda, I found out later, was that he thought that the Great Society…would be easier for him to bring first. If he had said that, we would probably have agreed with him. But we didn’t have a choice.”
This story was originally published January 7, 2015 at 9:17 AM with the headline "Blog | Is this 2015 or 1965? NAACP building near Denver bombed, “Selma” in theaters soon."