The History Channel Presents Voices of Civil Rights
The civil rights movement in the 1950s and '60s--a tumultuous time marked by frequent tragedy and occasional triumph--is examined in this provocative two-disc, four-hour set containing five programs produced for the History Channel. The first of these, "Voices of Civil Rights," eschews the standard documentary format of narration, interviews, photos, etc. in favor of personal, firsthand reminiscences by people, black and white alike, who lived through the turbulent years when there were two very separate Americas, especially in the South. For "Negroes," there was the world in which they were reared, loved and cherished; then there was "the real world," where they were hated by whites and discrimination was a bitter fact of daily life. Major events and issues like the struggles for school integration and voter registration, the killing of Medgar Evers, and the Ku Klux Klan's reign of terror are covered, but it's the anecdotal accounts of these exceptionally well-spoken people that really drive them home. The extraordinary tale of the KKK's atrocities against the family of Vernon Dahmer, for instance, is told not only by the victims but by one of the Klansmen who participated. Repentant and deeply ashamed to this day, the latter ultimately testified in court against his "brethren"; later, while serving his own sentence, he was visited in prison and forgiven by the very people whose lives he had shattered.The remaining documentaries on the first disc detail the villainous tactics of the "Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission" (a government-appointed agency whose mission was to use whatever was needed--propaganda, threats, actual violence--to suppress the civil rights movement in that state), and the events surrounding March 7, 1965, the "bloody Sunday" when marchers in Selma, Alabama were viciously attacked by the local police. These are stories that evoke grim memories of folks like Sheriffs Jim Clark and Bull Connor, and racist governors Ross Barnett (Mississippi) and George Wallace (Alabama), all of them driven by a flammable combination of ignorance, hubris, and the fear of losing a preeminence they'd done nothing to earn. But it was a time that also witnessed the emergence of Martin Luther King, Jr. and a call to action by President Lyndon Johnson, who knew there was something very wrong about a country where young black people could fight in Vietnam but were denied the right to vote at home. Disc Two includes a biography of King, depicting a "reluctant hero... who raged beneath the weight of his burden," a leader who did not seek his position but was chosen for it. A second bio details the life and work of Thurgood Marshall, the first African American justice to sit on the U.S. Supreme Court. Neither disc contains any bonus features.--Sam Graham