FILMING "SELMA" ON BRIDGE STILL NAMED FOR A KKK LEADER OFFERS DIRECTOR AVA DUVERNAY A WAY TO ANGER THE GHOSTS OF RACISM - "60 MINUTES" SUNDAY

Defends Controversial Portrayal of LBJ as Her Interpretation of a Man Who Wasn't Always "100 Percent in the Corner" of Black People

The director of the new movie celebrating Martin Luther King, Jr. and civil rights tells Bob Simon that filming it on a bridge still named for a KKK leader was poetic justice for past racism. Simon profiles "Selma" director Ava DuVernay, who also defends her film's controversial portrayal of President Lyndon Johnson, on 60 MINUTES, Sunday, Feb. 8 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT) on the CBS Television Network.

Standing in front of the Selma, Ala., bridge that still bears the name of Confederate General and Ku Klux Klan leader Edmund Pettus, DuVernay recalls her feelings shooting critical scenes on it. "I took great pleasure directing scenes on this bridge," she tells Simon with a smile. "I imagined [Pettus] turning over in his grave a little bit [and him] thinking, 'Where did it all go wrong? This was not supposed to happen,'" she says. Watch an excerpt.

DuVernay shot graphic scenes on the bridge of African Americans being beaten by police, just as they were during the historic "Bloody Sunday" march for voting rights in Selma in 1965.

Central to the civil rights story was the role played by President Lyndon Johnson, who was seen by many now and in the day as a champion of racial equality. Some critics took issue with the portrayal of Johnson in DuVernay's film, saying it showed him as more hindrance than help to King.

"History is to be interpreted through the lens of the people who are reading it and experiencing it on the page or at the time," DuVernay says. "And this is my interpretation." She acknowledges that Johnson, a Southern politician, turned out to eventually be a champion for civil rights. "But he didn't start that way. To try to push the idea that he was always 100 percent in the corner of the black man and woman in America is to not know your history," she says.

DuVernay's lens was formed partially through summertime visits to her father's family in Loundes County, Ala., where the KKK held sway for decades. Simon accompanied her back to the area not far from Selma to see DuVernay's parents Darlene and Murray Maye, who remember the marches and recalled stories of locals threatened for supporting the movement. "You're housing and feeding civil rights workers... Someone comes and burns a cross on your lawn," says DuVernay. "You can't call the police because it was the police," she tells Simon.