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Lorraine Toussaint has joined the cast of Ava DuVernay’s MLK drama Selma, playing Amelia Boynton, a leading civil rights activist who played a key role in efforts that led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act and who was the first African American woman in Alabama to run for Congress. She helped Martin Luther King Jr. establish his headquarters and helped plan and lead the march from Selma to Montgomery that came to be known as “Bloody Sunday.”

I say it’s a like a Middle Of Nowhere reunion, because Toussaint and Selma star David Oyelowo, both co-starred in DuVernay’s last feature effort, Middle Of Nowhere. Could it possibly be that the star of that film, Emayatzy Corinealdi, also eventually joins the cast of Selma? Speculation… speculation…

DuVernay made the announcement via her Instagram page earlier today.

The cast of Selma also includes Keith Stanfield playing playing Jimmie Lee Jackson, Carmen Ejogo as Coretta Scott King, and Tom Wilkinson as President Lyndon B. Johnson in a film produced by Oprah Winfrey, Brad Pitt’s Plan B and Christian Colson (who won an Oscar for producing Slumdog Millionaire). 

Paramount Pictures is also on board the Pathe UK-backed project, which centers on the 1965 landmark voting rights campaign regarded as the peak of the civil rights movement.
Toussaint can next be seen shaking things up in the upcoming second season of the Netflix original series, Orange Is The New Black, which debuts on the streaming platform exclusively, on Friday, June 6, 2014.
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