Following a powerful performance of "Glory" on a stage designed to look like Alabama's Edmund Pettus Bridge, John Legend and Common won Best Original Song for their "Selma" track at the 87th Annual Academy Awards.

"We say that 'Selma' is now because the struggle for social justice is now," Legend told the audience assembled at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, Calif. on Sunday (Feb. 22).

The struggle for civil rights depicted in Ava DuVernay's film is as much a reality today as it was in 1965, he explained. The Selma to Montgomery marches, the student protests in Hong Kong, the fact that there are more black men incarcerated today than there were enslaved in 1850 -- all of these things are connected, he said, and that must be recognized -- if not by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences then by the rest of us.