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Last update - 17 avril 2018

Awakenings focuses on the catalytic events of 1954-1956. The Mississippi lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till led to a widely publicized trial where a courageous black man took the stand and accused two white men of murder. In Montgomery, Alabama, Rosa Parks refused to yield her bus seat to a white man and triggered a year long boycott that resulted in the desegregation of public buses. Ordinary citizens and local leaders joined the black struggle for freedom. The Southern Christian Leadership Conference was formed. In response, may white southerners closed ranks in opposition to the burgeoning black rights movement. Racial discrimination finally became a political issue.

Fighting Back follows the struggle for equality from the schoolroom to the courtroom and back as blacks reject the existing system of “separate but equal” education. In 1954, the Supreme Court also rejects the system with its historic Brown v. Board of Education decision. The legal battle won, in 1957 nine black teenagers dare to integrate Little Rock’s Central High School. In 1962, a resolute James Meredith enrolls at the University of Mississippi. Students, parents, and lawyers unite to guarantee a better education and a better future for their children.

Ain’t scared of your jails chronicles the courage displayed by thousands of young people and college students who joined the ranks of the movement and gave it new direction. In 1960, lunch counter sit-ins spread across the South, may organized by the new, energetic Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. In 1961, on the Freedom Rides, many young people faced violence and defied death threats as they labored to obliterate segregation in interstate bus travel below the Mason-Dixon Line. The growing movement toward racial equality influenced the 1960 Presidential campaign; and federal rights versus state’s rights became an issue.

No Easy Walk explores a crucial phase in the civil rights movement—the emergence of mass demonstrations and marches as a powerful protest vehicle. In Albany, Georgia, police chief Laurie Pritchett challenged Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.’s tactics of nonviolent mass demonstration. In Birmingham, Alabama, school children steadfastly marched against the violent spray of fire hoses and were jailed as a result. The triumphant 1963 March on Washington, D.C. captured worldwide attention and garnered broad national support, helping to shift federal policy.