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I marched back then - I was in a civil-rights musical, Fly Blackbird, and we met Martin Luther King.

I was a child when the March on Washington led by Martin Luther King occurred, and I wanted to hear what was going on. I wanted to be a part of it. I wanted to contribute in the best way I possibly could.

With 'Selma,' I grew up in Alabama, 45 minutes away from Selma. I have gone to that commemorative march many times with my parents.

I had been involved in the March on Washington in 1963. I was with friends carrying a sign, 'Protestants, Jews and Catholics for Civil Rights.'

In 1999, I was in St. Louis with Martin Luther King III as we led protests against the state's failure to hire minority contractors for highway construction projects. We went at dawn on a summer day with over a thousand people and performed acts of civil disobedience.

I was born after the Civil Rights Movement. I never saw Martin Luther King alive.

There were three Selma-to-Montgomery marches in March 1965, and Rosa Parks had missed the first one. Parks, whose act of civil disobedience sparked the Montgomery bus boycott in 1955, moved to Detroit two years later for safety reasons.

For me the march was a labor - a labor of love - but I was busy handing out flyers for the National Association of Black Social Workers, so I really wasn't standing in the crowd listening and observing. I was busy.

I went to a bunch of marches in New York and Washington, and you know I believe in the cause, but to march with those people takes a lot of compromise on my end.

I was raised in a very activist household so that I grew up surrounded by people who were activists.