Programs

1	PROLOGUE	Read the script Read the summary
	Race relations and social conditions across the American South prior to World War II. Written by Julian Bond.
	COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA
	The use of litigation through the courts as a route to social change.
2	THE ROAD TO LITIGATION	Read the script Read the summary
	Formation of the statewide NAACP in South Carolina. Thurgood Marshall and the 1941 equal pay for black teachers lawsuit, and challenging the all-white democratic primary.
3	UNDER COLOR OF LAW	Read the script Read the summary
	Briggs v. Elliot, the lawsuit in rural Clarendon County to challenge segregated schools. On appeal it became part of Brown v. Board of Education, the U.S. Supreme Court ruling that ended segregation in the South.
4	HEY HEY, HO HO, SEGREGATION'S GOT TO GO	Read the script Read the summary
	Repercussions from Brown v. Board of Education. Desegregation of public schools in Columbia. 1960's boycotts and marches.
5	ORANGEBURG	Read the script Read the summary
	Columbia as a focus for change in the state. The Orangeburg massacre -- three students are killed by state troopers while protesting on their campus at South Carolina State University.
	MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
	The birth and evolution of the strategy of a mass movement.
6	THE CRADLE OF THE CONFEDERACY	Read the script Read the summary
	Social conditions in Montgomery after WWII. The antecedents to the bus boycott: Rev. Vernon Johns, the NAACP and the Women's Political Council.
7	WALK AND PRAY	Read the script Read the summary
	The bus boycott, Part I: Rosa Parks arrest and the establishment of the Montgomery Improvement Association under the leadership of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.
8	THE BUS BOYCOTT	Read the script Read the summary
	The bus boycott, Part II: Tactics, strategies and events during the year long boycott.
9	MY FEET IS TIRED, BUT MY SOUL IS RESTED	Read the script Read the summary
	The bus boycott, Part III: The settlement of the boycott, Dr. King leaves Montgomery for Atlanta.
10	ROCKING THE CRADLE	Read the script Read the summary
	Montgomery after the boycott: apathy and internal conflict, the freedom rides and the Selma marches.
	LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS
	The practice and implications of federal intervention to protect individual civil rights.
11	THE JIM CROW YEARS	Read the script Read the summary
	Social conditions and social change in Little Rock and East Arkansas;, 1940-1956.
12	NINE FOR JUSTICE	Read the script Read the summary
	The desegregation of Little Rock public schools, Part I: 1954-1957. The history and context behind the effort to integrate Little Rock's prestigious Central High School.
13	SOLDIERS IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE	Read the script Read the summary
	The desegregation of Little Rock public schools, Part II: 1957-1958. President Eisenhower sends in federal troops to protect the rights of nine black school children.
14	THE LOST YEAR	Read the script Read the summary
	The desegregation of Little Rock public schools, Part III: 1959-1960. The Women's Emergency Committee forms to pressure re-opening of the public schools as integrated institutions.
15	THE 1960s	Read the script Read the summary
	A review of civil rights activism in Little Rock and East Arkansas during the 1960s. Describes the process of a growing militancy and rifts within the movement.
	JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI
	The five programs documenting Jackson broadly describe the violent resistance encountered by civil rights workers and the strategies that evolved to challenge that resistance.
16	AMERICAN APARTHEID	Read the script Read the summary
	Social conditions in Jackson and rural Mississippi between 1940 and 1960, including the formation of white Citizen's Councils and the state Sovereignty Commission, and the opposition organized by the NAACP, led by Mississippi field secretary, Medgar Evers.
17	THE BIRTH OF THE JACKSON MOVEMENT	Read the script Read the summary
	Chronicles Medgar Evers' early leadership, the library sit-in, the Freedom Rides and the beginning of 1960's movement in Jackson.
18	THE DEMONSTRATIONS	Read the script Read the summary
	Medgar Evers' murder and funeral, and the consequent elementary and high school students' mass demonstrations.
19	FREEDOM SUMMER	Read the script Read the summary
	1964 and the Freedom Summer campaign that brought northern students into Mississippi to register and educate voters.
20	POWER AND RESISTANCE	Read the script Read the summary
	The late sixties and the formation of the anti-war movement, black power and the killing of the Jackson State University students by state troopers.
	ATLANTA, GEORGIA
	The five programs documenting Atlanta, describe the process of negotiated settlements and the manipulation of public information to both protect and challenge the status quo.
21	PRELUDE OF A MOVEMENT	Read the script Read the summary
	Social conditions in Atlanta between 1940 and 1960 and early voting rights protests.
22	THE ATLANTA STUDENT MOVEMENT	Read the script Read the summary
	The Atlanta Student Movement, 1960-61 -- one of the largest and best organized student protests in the nation. Conflict between the older and younger black leadership.
23	CROW AND MOLASSES	Read the script Read the summary
	The extended and tumultuous process of desegregating the Atlanta public schools, 1954-1970.
24	THE CITY TOO BUSY TO HATE	Read the script Read the summary
	Describes how Atlanta's business and civic leadership in order to provide an acceptable climate for business, carefully created and maintained the myth that the city had no racial conflicts, and desegregated peacefully and willingly.
25	THE RISE OF BLACK POLITICAL POWER	Read the script Read the summary
	Over a twelve year period, describes the changes, and provides perspective upon the transformation of Atlanta from a city led by white politicians to one led by black leadership.
26	EPILOGUE	Read the script Read the summary
	Bringing the listener up to date. From the people who made the Movement, responses to the following questions: What did the Movement achieve? Is the Movement over? Is there still a need for a Movement today? Written by Julian Bond.

1	PROLOGUE	Read the script
	Race relations and social conditions across the American South prior to World War II. Black and white Southerners from South Carolina, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi and Georgia tell of highly segregated and unequal conditions as they affected family life and public institutions. In schools and libraries, on trains and buses and streetcars, in voting places and at the police precinct, Southerners could expect very different opportunities and experiences, depending on the color of their skin. The poll tax, the power of the primary, and the threat of death, kept black Southerners from voting. The strategies they used to cope, included humor, play-acting, complex communication codes and organized resistance. Script for the prologue was written by Julian Bond.
	COLUMBIA, SOUTH CAROLINA
2	THE ROAD TO LITIGATION	Read the script
	Chronicles the courageous early efforts of a strong statewide NAACP, headed by J.M. Hinton. The work of the NAACP had been buttressed by Black journalists such as John H. McCray, editor of the Lighthouse and Informer. Columbia activists realized, as NAACP leader Rev. I. DeQuincey Newman later certified, that a legal offensive, "a flank attack on segregation and discrimination," would prove most effective given the presence of harassment and intimidation by many area Whites. Led by young New York attorney Thurgood Marshall and local lawyer Harold Bouleware, the NAACP launched its legal attack with a successful lawsuit in 1942 that equalized pay for Black teachers.
3	UNDER COLOR OF LAW	Read the script
	Traces the ongoing attempt to challenge Jim Crow through litigation. The focal point of the NAACP's legal assault was an obscure bus transportation case in rural Clarendon County. A number of brave individuals, including educator and minister Joseph Albert DeLaine, and farmers Harry and Eliza Briggs, lost jobs, land, and credit in pressing their cause. Although Thurgood Marshall lost Briggs v. Elliott at the state level, it became the central case in the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court known as Brown v. Board of Education, Topeka, Kansas. On May 17, 1954, the high court ruled unanimously that public school desegregation should proceed "with all deliberate speed."
4	HEY HEY, HO HO, SEGREGATION'S GOT TO GO	Read the script
	Focuses on desegregation strategies undertaken in the city of Columbia. The Richland County United Citizens' Committee, a group of Black parents and educators, sparked the move toward integration of the city's schools. Before the 1954 desegregation order, parents like Hattie Fruster had been forced to send their children as many as 15 miles away to go to the nearest "colored-only" school. However, civil rights activists did not limit themselves to school desegregation. Fiery NAACP organizer Modjeska Simkins helped initiate a "selective buying" campaign, a series of boycotts demonstrating the use of direct action strategies to desegregate facilities.
5	ORANGEBURG	Read the script
	Charts early 1955 efforts by parents to desegregate the schools and white leaders' repercussions against them, followed by organized boycotts by blacks of local stores. Follows events in the town that is home to historically-black schools Clafin College and South Carolina State University. Student protests against a segregated bowling alley led to a confrontation between rock throwing students and heavily armed police and national guardsmen at South Carolina State on February 18, 1968. Without first being fired upon, police-military forces opened fire with a hail of bullets. Three students were killed, a number injured, in what would become known as the Orangeburg Massacre. Authorities arrested injured former SNCC activist Cleveland Sellers and immediately imprisoned him. From the ashes of the massacre came the United Citizens party, which was instrumental in placing in office the state's first black elected officials since Reconstruction.
	MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
6	THE CRADLE OF THE CONFEDERACY	Read the script
	Sets the stage for events of late 1955 by illustrating how entrenched the customs of segregation were in the Alabama capitol. Nevertheless, three groups would coalesce to help spark the movement for civil rights in the city. Black professional Women like Jo Ann Gibson Robinson and other members of the Women's Political Council had begun pushing for courteous treatment on city buses in 1953. E.D. Nixon, a member of the groundbreaking Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, headed the ubiquitous NAACP. Several Black clergymen, among them Rev. Solomon Seay of Zion AME Church, had dedicated themselves to the cause of eroding the power of Jim Crow. These groups were at the ready when seamstress and staunch NAACP member Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a White passenger on December 5, 1955.
7	WALK AND PRAY	Read the script
	Details the early events of the Montgomery bus boycott. Not long after Rosa Parks gave her approval, the NAACP, local ministers, and the Women's Political Council worked separately, then collectively, to press the issue. The leader of what would become the Montgomery Improvement Association (MIA) was the 26-year-old Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. A mass meeting at the Holt Street Baptist Church signaled the beginning of the boycott, the first sustained mass-based effort to challenge segregation in the South. After city commissioners rejected the MIA's limited demands for courteous service, the group decided to press for full integration of the buses. On December 13, 1955 the MIA launched an ambitious well organized car pool supplying 20,000 rides a day.
8	THE BUS BOYCOTT	Read the script
	Covers the bulk of the 13-month MIA bus desegregation campaign. Prior to the boycott three-fourths of bus passengers were African American. As the boycott continued the ranks of the Citizens' Council, which sought to uphold segregation, swelled to include almost all Whites in the city. Whites denied loans, foreclosed mortgages, and fired Black workers. Following the MIA's decision to press for full integration of the buses in a suit filed in federal court, terrorists bombed the King family home, then that of local NAACP leader E.D, Nixon. These acts only served to strengthen the resolve of the boycotters. Behind the scenes, a number of White women aided the car pool in an effort to keep their domestic "help."
9	MY FEET IS TIRED, BUT MY SOUL IS RESTED	Read the script
	Chronicles the national and world media descent upon Montgomery as the protest politics of nonviolent mass movement began to hammer away at Jim Crow. Dr. King's emphasis on redemptive nonviolent activism in response to White terror and harassment helped to empower boycotters. Soon financial contributions to the MIA were pouring in from worldwide. Segregationists responded by mounting a disinformation campaign in which they claimed that MIA leaders were pocketing funds and traveling in expensive cars while the vast majority of Blacks pounded the pavement. This strategy failed, and on November 13, 1956 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Alabama's laws segregating bus passengers were unconstitutional.
10	ROCKING THE CRADLE	Read the script
	Follows the post-boycott course of events in the city. Following the boycott Martin Luther King, Jr. and fellow minister Ralph David Abernathy left the city to found the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) in Atlanta. Montgomery would not take center stage again until 1961, when the city served as a stop for the Freedom Rides, a project initiated by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) to test a court ruling in favor of desegregated interstate public transportation. A White mob greeted CORE leader James Farmer and students like Diane Nash and John Lewis with ferocious brutality as they departed a Greyhound bus. As outraged as the nation was over this chaotic rampage, it would be equally inspired four years later by the famous SNCC-SCLC voting rights march from Selma to Montgomery. The march led to passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act.
	LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS
11	THE JIM CROW YEARS	Read the script
	lIlustrates how race relations in both rural and urban Arkansas often depended upon intimidation of and violence toward Blacks. The starkest example of such violence was the 1919 riot in Elaine, in which Whites killed as many as 100 Blacks following efforts by Black tenant farmers to organize themselves politically. Indeed, political power remained firmly in the hands of a White elite through the use of tactics such as the poll tax and all-White primary. Although Blacks and Whites were often more familiar with each other socially in the state, that familiarity had been linked to the political realities mentioned above. As a result, Blacks were not expected to challenge "their proper place."
12	NINE FOR JUSTICE	Read the script
	Shows how post-World War II currents within Little Rock's Black community led to the push to desegregate its schools. The NAACP claimed an important victory when the University of Arkansas Law School admitted its first Black student in 1948. Nine years, later, however, integrating Little Rock's prestigious Central High School would be a more difficult task for editor and NAACP activist Daisy Bates. The nine teenagers picked to integrate Central were excellent students. But the stakes were high on the first day of classes, and Governor Orval Faubus--considered a moderate--ordered members of the state's National Guard to prevent the Blacks from entering. As Judge Wiley Branton, Jr. notes, the "most serious constitutional clash between a state and the federal government since the Civil War" was now underway.
13	SOLDIERS IN THE SCHOOLHOUSE	Read the script
	Chronicles the tense showdown at Central High and the courageous efforts of the Little Rock Nine. After 17 days Governor Faubus finally withdrew the National Guard, but local police remained and segregationists continued to hold firm. Vicious crowds made each passing day almost unbearable for the young Black students. At night fall on September 24, 1957, President Eisenhower dispatched the 101st Airborne Division to the city. Although the federal troops remained for but a week, their presence outraged segregationists in the city. As classes resumed so did the inhumane treatment of the Little Rock Nine by White parents and students alike. Minniejean Brown, one of the nine, was expelled for a simple act of retaliation.
14	THE LOST YEAR	Read the script
	Studies the various responses of Whites in Little Rock to the prospect of school integration in the year following the desegregation of Central High. Making the most of segregationist fervor statewide, Faubus signed a law that allowed a school district to close its schools to avoid integration. When city schools did not open in the fall of 1958, a group of middle-class White women led by Pat House, Irene Samuel and Vivion Brewer formed the Women's Emergency Committee. Members of the committee, many of whom were not integrationists, weathered threats and intimidation as they worked to show that keeping schools closed drove money and people away from the city.
15	THE 1960s	Read the script
	Follows events in the Arkansas capital during that decade. The sit-in movement reached the city when a group of students from historically black Philander Smith College marched to the downtown Woolworth's in March 1960. When SNCC activists held a sit-in demonstration to protest segregation at the state capital cafeteria, they were met with tear gas by police. The desegregation of downtown businesses was also aided by an influential secret committee that included two black members, George Henry and Ozell Sutton. During the mid-1960's more militant youth groups such as Black United Youth (BUY) made their mark on Little Rock. BUY activists organized a successful boycott of grocery stores which refused to employ blacks.
	JACKSON, MISSISSIPPI
	The five programs documenting Jackson broadly describe the violent resistance encountered by civil rights workers and the strategies that evolved to challenge that resistance.
16	AMERICAN APARTHEID	Read the script
	Demonstrates the ways in which violence, white political power, and Jim Crow laws helped to reinforce social inequality in the state. Organizations like the Citizens' Council and the Sovereignty Commission served to strengthen segregation while simultaneously mobilizing an active white constituency. Terrorism played a pivotal role also, as countless blacks fell victim to harassment, home bombings, and lynchings, such as the murder of a visiting Chicago boy, Emmett Till. Nevertheless, there were African Americans in both rural and urban areas who waged a daily campaign of resistance. Medgar Evers, Aaron Henry, Amzie Moore and other activists in the state's poorly funded NAACP began to challenge all aspects of the unequal dual system in the state.
17	THE BIRTH OF THE JACKSON MOVEMENT	Read the script
	Focuses on the efforts of civil rights activists to press for equality despite threats and intimidation. Police arrested nine students from Tougaloo College who staged a sit-in at the Jackson Public Library in violation of a law which made demonstrations illegal. Various newly formed organizations launched statewide voter education projects. In 1961 activists from the different groups formed the Council of Federated Organizations (COFO), an umbrella organization that included members of SNCC, CORE, and SCLC. Meanwhile, NAACP leader Medgar Evers continued to push for equality in the state as the number of threats against his life increased.
18	THE DEMONSTRATIONS	Read the script
	Chronicles the ways in which civil rights activists sought to uphold the legacy of slain NAACP leader Medgar Evers. Evers, the architect of the budding Jackson movement, had been assassinated on June 11, 1963 by Citizens Council member Byron de la Beckwith. Grass-roots activists and frustrated community residents, some of whom carried weapons, transformed the funeral procession for the slain leader into a militant protest demonstration. Police responded by arresting a number of young Blacks as the protest turned violent. A number of activists, including Constance Slaughter Harvey, Henry Kirksey, and Aurelia Young, took up the mantle of protest following the funeral confrontation. In turn, the state of Mississippi continued to respond with fierce repression.
19	FREEDOM SUMMER	Read the script
	Discusses the 1964 campaign waged by 1000 civil rights activists who converged on the state to assist voter registration efforts. While segregationists like William Simmons called the SNCC program "a student invasion," Blacks such as NAACP leader Aaron Henry welcomed the outside help. Indeed, as SNCC activist Cleveland Sellers noted, "Going into Mississippi was like going into Vietnam." Whites murdered several student activists, including James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Nevertheless, organizers like Bob Moses and Sandra Cason established Freedom Schools throughout the state as rural Blacks courageously registered to vote. Grass-roots activists such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Ed King and Hazel Palmer established the Freedom Democratic Party, which challenged the all-White delegation at the Democratic Party's national convention.
20	POWER AND RESISTANCE	Read the script
	Chronicles the activism of the turbulent late 1960's and early 1970's. In 1966 James Meredith, who broke the color bar at the University of Mississippi three years before, began what he called a "march against fear" from Memphis to Jackson. Civil rights activists from throughout the region responded when a terrorist shot Meredith soon after he crossed the state line. SNCC activists Willie Ricks and Stokely Carmichael first used the term Black Power during this march, illustrating the growing division between younger activists and those affiliated with NAACP and SCLC. In May of 1970 police killed two Jackson State University students, Earl Green and Philip Gibbs, in a brutal assault on an antiwar demonstration. The Jackson State tragedy further propelled the movement, however, and some doors to opportunity began to open.
	ATLANTA, GEORGIA
21	PRELUDE OF A MOVEMENT	Read the script
	Stresses that in the spirit of Booker T. Washington, accommodation and racial compromise have dominated the Atlanta scene for Black and White leaders in Atlanta. Segregated by Jim Crow laws, the city's Black population developed a network of independent businesses and cultural institutions strengthened by the presence of the Atlanta University system. The affiliated colleges of the historically Black university also served to buttress an African American middle class led by Democrat A.T. Walden and Republican J.W. Dobbs.. These leaders formed the bipartisan Atlanta Negro Voters League in the late 1940's to influence city elections. In this way, the city's Black middle class had influence over longtime Mayor William Hartsfield and other politicians.
22	THE ATLANTA STUDENT MOVEMENT	Read the script
	Chronicles the sit-in demonstrations sparked by the February 1960 student protests in Greensboro, North Carolina. Students from the affiliated schools of the Atlanta University system such as Julian Bond, Lonnie King and Mary Ann Smith organized a series of very well organized sit-ins across the city to protest segregation. Although some of the established Black leaders, like businessman Jesse Hill, supported the students, others were uncomfortable with this radical departure from back room negotiations. Tensions between younger activists and established moderates came to the fore during the boycott of Rich's department store in 1961. However, Martin Luther King delivered one of the most moving speeches of his career to help maintain a united front.
23	CROW AND MOLASSES	Read the script
	Covers the effort to achieve integration in the city's public schools. The Georgia state legislature responded to the historic Brown v. Board decision by advocating the closing of schools to avoid desegregation. Bolstered by the integration of the University of Georgia by Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes, the NAACP pushed forward with desegregation of the Atlanta schools. When the prospect of another Little Rock loomed on the horizon, a group of liberal White women formed HOPE (Help Our Public Education), a group similar to the Arkansas capital's Women's Emergency Committee to keep the schools open. Token integration proceeded without major problems as Mayor Hartsfield and the city scored a public relations victory. For Black students like Martha Holmes Jackson, however, school integration meant loneliness and isolation.
24	THE CITY TOO BUSY TO HATE	Read the script
	Chronicles the efforts of the city's leaders to promote the image of Atlanta as progressive on the matter of race relations. Mindful of the negative publicity racial violence generated in cities like Little Rock and New Orleans, Mayor Hartsfield coined the slogan. As NAACP leader Jondelle Johnson and others have noted, the city's business elite worked with political leaders to insure that Atlanta would be the Capital of the twentieth-century South, which meant that attracting outside capital became bound up with the city's image. However, reality sometimes overshadowed image, as in 1962, when newly elected Mayor Ivan Allen attempted to block Black penetration of an all-White subdivision by ordering the city to erect a barrier across Peyton Road. The violent demonstration in the Summerhill neighborhood provided further tarnish late in the decade.
25	THE RISE OF BLACK POLITICAL POWER	Read the script
	Follows the course of events which led to the election of Maynard Jackson--the city's first Black mayor--in 1973. A number of students who participated in the sit-ins of the early 1960's also focused their energies on voter registration efforts in Atlanta, placing the names of thousands of Black residents on the rolls. As a result of efforts such as these Leroy Johnson became the first African American elected to a southern state legislature since Reconstruction. When SNCC activist Julian Bond won his grass-roots campaign for the state legislature in 1965 Georgia politicians refused to seat him because of his support for a SNCC statement condemning the Vietnam War. Black voting strength continued to grow steadily as the city's demographics changed due to White flight to the suburbs. Jackson's owed his historic election victory to Black Atlantans, not the members of the traditional biracial leadership coalition.
26	EPILOGUE	Read the script
	Bringing the listener up to date. From the people who made the Movement, responses to the following questions: What did the Movement achieve? Is the Movement over? Is there still a need for a Movement today? Top of Page