DEBORAH LEFF: I am Deborah Leff, the Director of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. On behalf of myself and John Shattuck, the CEO of the Kennedy Library Foundation, who is here with us, it’s a pleasure for both of us to have you here to share this day honoring one of the nation’s most remarkable moral and political leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King. I’d like to acknowledge the sponsors of the Kennedy Library Forum series: Bank of America, The Lowell Institute, Boston Capital, and our media sponsors, WBUR, The Boston Globe, and boston.com.
The 1960s, when John F. Kennedy was elected president, were a tumultuous period in the civil rights movement, a time of great injustice, which Dr. King worked so hard and effectively reversed. By 1963 President Kennedy spoke to the nation about the need for a different America.
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MS. LEFF: The struggle to free American citizens is the subject of what many consider to be the finest documentary film series ever produced, Henry Hampton’s Eyes on the Prize, a comprehensive chronicle of the civil rights movement, which received more than 20 awards, including Emmys, the Dupont Award, and the Edward R. Morrow Brotherhood Award.
Today we are privileged to have with us three producers of that series, who will share with us some of their favorite segments and then discuss them with us. Judy Richardson, co-producer of the series, was a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee -- SNCC -- in the early 1960s. She worked on civil rights issues throughout the south, and in 1965 was the office manager for Julian Bond’s successful campaign for the Georgia House of Representatives. She has produced and won awards for numerous other documentaries and is currently co-editing an anthology of SNCC’s women’s writing, showing the courage of more than 50 women civil rights activists during the 1960s.
JUDY RICHARDSON: Could I just make one correction? I was not coproducer; they made the film. So I was series associate co-producer. I didn’t do it.
MS. LEFF: Thank you. Judith Vecchione is an executive producer at Boston’s own WGBH. She was series senior producer of Eyes on the Prize and has served as executive producer on films dealing with China, Latin America, and women in science. She previously worked with many of WGBH’s major documentary series, including NOVA, World, Vietnam, and Frontline.
And it’s a special pleasure to introduce the woman beside me, my friend Callie Crossley, with whom I worked closely at ABC News. Ms. Crossley was a producer of Eyes on the Prize. You can see her regularly on WGBH’s Beat the Press. And you can also find her on NPR, New England Cable News, and CNN. A winner of the Edward R. Murrow Award, Ms. Crossley has also been a fellow with the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics and a teacher to many. Callie, I turn it over to you.
CALLIE CROSSLEY: The Eyes on the Prize series is a 14-part series. There were series one and two. Series one is Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years and series two, Eyes on the Prize: America at the Racial Crossroads. I say that because we cross over both of the series. And I’ll give you just a tiny bit about how each of us came to work on it.
Judy Richardson – all the way on the end – had actually been working with Henry for some time. Of course, you have heard she was working with the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee and worked with Henry in the first iteration of the series, which were half hours to be sponsored by Capital City’s ABC at that time or Cap City. And when that didn’t happen – which we all think now was a great thing because Henry was able to take back editorial control of the series after that – Judy came on as, I don't know, not only series associate producer but broader than that. So much wisdom, made sure that we hewed the vision, the passion, and all of the emotion that happened during that time, we producers on that series. Judith came to us, great blessing that she came, as senior series producer. And I quote her still today about how one makes an excellent documentary and what other kinds of rules that you have to follow, and we are happy to answer questions about that later if you want to have it.
And I came, hired by Judy and by Henry Hampton, as a producer on two of the hours, four and six. And that’s how we all came to the series. It was a fortuitous coming together, I believe. And those of us who have passed through the doors of Blackside, Incorporated, which was founded by Henry Hampton, share a deep and long lasting bond. Whether or not we want to have the bond, we still have it at this point. We’ve got to have it because that’s who we are. So I wanted to say that.
Judith wrote in the opening hour of Eyes, which the first series just set up what we were about to tackle as we approached this subject, some words which I just thought were fabulous. And she said that the civil rights movement took place to make America be America for all of its citizens. And that’s important to remember today as we are celebrating Martin Luther King’s birthday. And by the way, he would have been 76 today.
Something that we face, a little problem in doing the series, is that we wanted to make sure that you understood who Martin Luther King was and what his role was. But we also wanted to make sure that ordinary citizens and other people propelled to leadership, you came to know those as well. So, as you will learn, when I talk a little bit later, it was tough for me to even find some pieces to show you from show six, because we concentrated so much on making certain that King’s role in it was balanced with those folks who really put their lives on the line as just ordinary citizens living in those towns and cities across the south at the time.
And so we each have excerpts from our hours. We are going to tell you a little bit about each. And then at the end of it we can have some questions and answers. What we decided to do was to show you the evolution of King: the young King before he became prominent, the growing King, the sophisticated King, and then the King at the end of his life coming to terms with what his legacy will be and what he was still trying to communicate to an America that was really not yet ready to deal with the serious issues of racial segregation.
So, with that said, I’m going to bring up Judith. She is going to give a few comments before she runs the clip and then we will be right into the discussion. Thanks.
JUDITH VECCHIONE: Hi. Welcome. And thank you for asking me here. When I was thinking about this panel and presenting something on the evolution of Dr. King, I was thinking about what the scholars call the dangers of historical determinism or something along those lines. Meaning that all too often when we study someone, we look at someone like Dr. King or a president, President Kennedy, President Roosevelt, or any famous person, we are studying them because they are famous for having done something.
They were the leader of such and such a march. They were the president who signed such and such a bill. And it gives you the impression that that’s what they were aiming for, that that’s what they knew they were doing. That’s who they were. And there’re two problems with that as I see it. The first problem is it’s not true. It is just not true.
Take Franklin Roosevelt as an example. When the New Deal was being established, it wasn’t that he knew he was rewriting the social systems for America and how we look at our poorest citizens. He was making it up as he went along, as were so many people in his government. In fact, people complained. They would say the last person who talked to him is the person who signs off on it. He doesn’t follow what he should.
So it is historically wrong to think of someone like Dr. King or a president or whatever, as knowing that they were going to be leaders of a great movement. And it does them a disservice because it suggests the path was easy because they knew where they were going to be. The second thing that is wrong with this idea is, I think, it makes me feel helpless. It makes me feel that if I see something wrong in the world (and I don't know about you, but I do see things that are wrong in the world here and there) that I have to have angels playing trumpets or flinging banners over my head to know that I am supposed to do something about it.
I don’t think that is true, either. I think that as with so many of the people, major people in the civil rights movement like Dr. King and the ordinary people that Callie is talking about, the choice to go forward, to do the best you can is something that you have to make willfully, you have to try it. And so I wanted to start us off with a clip from the beginning of Eyes on the Prize.
It is in the first program. We are in Montgomery, Alabama. And a woman named Rosa Parks has just refused to give up her seat to a white man on a bus. Now, Mrs. Parks is not a major leader at this point. She is not a known figure. She is also not an uneducated woman making this choice without knowing what she is doing. She is quite savvy and knowledgeable. She has been active in the community. She makes a choice. And because of where it is and what time it is, Martin Luther King emerges as a leader. So let’s look at that first clip. It is about 13 minutes and I’ll talk for a moment afterwards.
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VECCHIONE: So, what we are looking at there, if you think about what I was saying before about it is not determined, you are looking at a very young, new figure on the national and international stage. And, in fact, he has been chosen. He has been pushed forward because of that newness. As Mr. Nixon says, the city fathers hadn’t gotten their hands on him yet. They needed someone who could come with a fresh, truthful perspective.
And you also see the uncertainty that he has. He doesn’t have those angels waving banners in front of him telling him, “You will now go on and lead a major movement that will, in the course of 10 years or 15 years or whatever it is ... is going to change America’s laws and society and the way we look at ourselves and think about our Constitution and our whole social fabric.” He doesn’t have that. He is just simply finding his way with the courage and the strength that he can find.
The other thing that is really important is where he finds that courage and strength. And I think this piece shows it. And all the way through Eyes we struggled to show that, which is the community around him. That is where the courage and strength comes from. If Dr. King with his golden tongue had emerged in a community that had no activist base, it would not have gone the way it had gone.
If the desire to have a boycott had started a few years before, a few years after, the course of the events would have been quite different. And it’s because of the community that is ready to move forward, to think, to form an active force for change that this boycott becomes something that can be sustained day after day, month after month after month. We are not talking about something that happens in a week. We are talking about something that happens over months and months and months.
And that ability to lead over that time, gives Dr. King time to develop himself. He grows. And, of course, we all know that one of the major components of wisdom is not just knowledge but growth, the ability to grow. Over this time period he is able to learn from his community. He is able to be supported and grow. And I will now pass it back to Callie.
CROSSLEY: There are a couple of things I wanted to pick up from what Judith has said and from the clip that you’ve just listened to. If you have been paying attention and I know you have, all last year, the celebration of Brown v. the Board of Education, the ruling that happened on May 17, 1954…. And I just want to put it in context, that when he said, “If we are wrong, the Supreme Court is wrong,” he is referring to the ruling in which the Supreme Court at that point said, “Separate but equal was unconstitutional.”
So he is right in the mix of what is happening and right on the cusp. And because it is right after that ruling and everybody thought -- or those who had been active in the community thought -- this was just going to wake up everything and change it. People are right there ready for the change. They’ve gotten the highest court in the land to say, “Separate but equal is unconstitutional.”
So when this happens in Montgomery, it is based on a lot of individual moments of courage in those earlier years. The root of the modern civil rights movement but now it takes off because there is a perfect timing, as Judith has said. Here is a guy with no hand on him. Here is the Supreme Court having said it. But here is also the disappointment of the people realizing the Supreme Court may have said it but it’s going to take something else to make this be real.
So that’s where we find ourselves. In the next clip that comes up, comes up from my hour, which is the sixth hour of the first series. Now, at this point there is a very sophisticated and battle-hardened King, because there’s been 10 years. Remember, in ’54 everybody thought it is over. Now, ’55, Montgomery bus boycott, a year of walking. Everybody thinks it’s over. And it is never over it seems. It keeps going. It keeps going. More deaths. More atrocities. More beatings. Birmingham. Mississippi.
So when we come to the end of the series, we are in Selma with a tired, a weary, an angry but a determined army of non-violent resistors. They are not going to stop. They have been going for 10 years. Something is going to change, and they are going to make a change. That’s where King is in the last hour of Eyes on the Prize - One. So I want you to just watch how sophisticated, how hardened, how he has grown into the leadership at this point. And then I’ll come back and there is another clip I will show you after that.
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CROSSLEY: That gives you a sense of how King had grown and matured. He also gives you a sense that he is looking outward by the reference to Vietnam, thinking beyond where they were in terms of this battle, of trying to get desegregation to happen and to get the attention of the nation. If you recall in Judith’s piece, Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth said, “We couldn’t shame America. We realized we couldn’t shame it.”
Well, it turns out you could, but it took almost 11 years of shame to do it. And right after Jimmy Lee Jackson’s death. And they formulate the plan to march to Montgomery, to demonstrate about this horrific thing that happened. Then there is an incident on the bridge when non-violent protestors are beaten by the Alabama state troopers. And that, finally, broadcast live by ABC, makes the nation say, “Who are we? Aren’t we America? What is this that we are beating non-violent people, children, women, everybody?” Nobody with guns because they are just trying to protest the kinds of conditions that are happening for black people in this country. So, that then, believe it or not, it wasn’t over in Selma. I want you watch the hour, but just to bring you up to date, one more death had to take place. And after Bloody Sunday when everybody comes to town because they want to stand up and say, “We don’t think that this is right. And we want to demonstrate that by our presence of being here.” And that night one of the young white ministers, who comes to town to stand with King and those protestors, is killed himself. And then, you know, there are just all kinds of explosions going on. During this whole hour there is also tension between the groups working somewhat well together to try to protest this.
The Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee that Judith, Judy, was a part of, and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, which was headed by King, were coming to butt heads about the manner in which one forms a movement and one leads a movement. SNCC felt it should be grassroots up and SCLC obviously felt charismatic leadership was key.
But with all of the tension going on, Selma was, in the end, successful for getting the attention of the nation and really forcing, or giving the ability of Lyndon Johnson, to make certain that the Voting Rights Act took place. The clip I’m going to show you now really is King at his most triumphant.
We are acknowledging that in the first series -- ’54 is bracketed by Brown v. Board in the end, the great civil rights legislation that happens. And then, after that, the movement starts to move this way, issues get a little bit more complex and Judy will talk about that later. But for right now, I want you to see the end of the hour, the sixth hour of the series, the first series of Eyes on the Prize, to see King possibly at his most triumphant.
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CROSSLEY: And we ended there because we understood that for so many people, as Judy will now pick up, Martin Luther King is frozen in that moment. But there was much more to what he had to do in his life and what he had to say about what continued to be the problem of racism in this country beyond that point. Judy?
JUDY RICHARDSON: Thank you, Callie. First of all, good afternoon. First, I want to say two personal things, and then I’m going to intro the film, let it play, and then say a few words about the film. Two personal notes, one is that Callie and Judith and I have been on panels before. We are like a little road show. But I have never said to them what I am going to say now,
which is, thank you, because…. Yeah, I was on the film. I was putting my two cents in. I was trying to find people. They made the film. They were the filmmakers. And when I say, yes … [APPLAUSE] … you see the power of the series and its filmmakers. When I see for example, Stokely…. I worked with Stokely. When we went into Lowndes County in 1966,
Lowndes County, Alabama, it was Stokely and I and a number of other SNCC people. But what we found when we got there was Albert Turner, whom you see earlier in the piece. That’s who we found already tilling those soils.
When I see Jim Forman…. Jim Forman, some of you may have seen his obituary a couple of days ago in The Boston Globe. There was also a large write-up in The New York Times, in The Washington Post, in The LA Times - the best one I would say. And I see him in that image, the strength that Forman was, organizing the organizers, young people who were coming out of SNCC, who were coming out of their own movements, as leaders of those movements, who didn’t want to hear anybody tell them what to do. And yet, Forman, that man standing next to, marching next to King in those overalls was so strong and was able to start a research department, start a photo department, start the newspaper. And when I see him there it is like he lives again. And he hasn’t been in that form for many years. And so to have him there in the series is like, it reminds you what he was. And that is so important.
So, OK, let me just say, I’m now going to intro the piece that I’m going to show. The first series is really about the civil rights movement in the south. What the second series is about … so that’s the first six hours … The second six hours is about the movement moving north. And you see both Dr. King and others in that movement, moving north. So the piece I’m going to show is Dr. King in 1967. Now he and his organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, SCLC, are beginning to go into Chicago.
Dr. King says about that movement to Chicago that, as violent and as horrible as the south was in terms of Birmingham and Montgomery and Bull Connor, he meets even greater violence, he says, and brutality when he goes north and goes staunch up against the hard-line racism of the north, of Chicago. And he and his organization are going up against the Daley machine, Mayor Daley and his machine. And he said that Mayor Daley had been really supportive of the southern movement.
But then it moves north. And when Dr. King says, “I have never met this kind of violence in Birmingham,” he is speaking from a lot of experience here. What I’m about to show is a clip that starts with Dr. King and his opposition to the Vietnam War and then goes into his and his organization’s trying to combat the growing gap between rich and poor. So if we can roll that now. Again, April 1967.
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RICHARDSON: Part of what I do…. I’m actually producing…. in the middle of producing a two-hour documentary for the History Channel. I’m on staff with a local production company called Northern Lights Production. So we are doing a two-hour documentary on slavery and slave resistance and slave catchers. I also completed a film for the National Underground Freedom Center in Cincinnati. So I have been steeped in slavery, more than I would ever have wanted to be.
I will say that what’s interesting is that as much as you talk about the resistance of the enslaved, as much as you talk about the organization that was created to do that kind of resistance, singly, individually, as groups, what’s so wonderful about seeing the civil rights movement is that we actually won some. And it’s nice to come back to this after how embedded I have been in slavery for several months now.
When I take this series into schools and I take it into schools.… I work with teachers in terms of professional development workshops. And how do you use Eyes on the Prize to talk about issues we are dealing with today? And what you find from teachers is that they tell you that young people often times do not believe that some of this stuff happened until they see it in Eyes on the Prize in black and white.
And what they see, what young people particularly see, is folks just like them. It is what Callie and Judith have been saying. Folks just like them who made and continued, who made and sustained the movement. One of the things I will say, when Callie mentioned that I was in the first iteration of what was going to be a two-hour documentary of the entire civil rights movement. It becomes 14 hours.
What she found, when I first started, was that there was no scholarship on the local movement I had known in Mississippi, Alabama, Southwest, Georgia. None of that was there. It was all focused.
I just saw Val. I’m sorry. You know, before I continue this, how many….. I just saw Valerie. All of the folks here, any folks here who worked on some of Eyes on the Prize, would you please stand up. Or worked at Blackside? I know Valerie is standing. Stand up. And there is Michael Ampersino(?).
Let’s stand up and let’s give us a hand.
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RICHARDSON: But what I was going to say is, what we found is there is not scholarship. There was scholarship totally on Dr. King and his greatness, which was absolutely undeniable. But what you didn’t get is stuff like local people by John Dittmer(?). You didn’t get Charles Paine’s work on Mississippi. You didn’t get the folks who are going now into Birmingham. And who was in Birmingham? Reverend Shuttlesworth, the one who says, “Rattlesnakes don’t commit suicide.”
There were all of these local people who were furrowing the ground but none of that…. There were no films. There was no scholarship. One of the things that Eyes does is that it talks so much about the absolute intelligence and courage of local people that historians began to start pursuing that and looking at. So you have all these wonderful books. Parting the Waters wasn’t out there when we first started it.
So, what you get with Eyes on the Prize is the sense that it was locally based. But that it wasn’t just about integrating lunch counters, which is what people usually say, “Oh, you all were just about lunch, you know, sitting at the lunch counters, getting beat over the head and singing, “We Shall Overcome.” No. What you realize and hear that in Dr. King, it’s about economic justice. We were fighting against the Vietnam War. That comes in ’66 and ’67.
We keep Dr. King in “I Have a Dream.” And in fact the last year when he is killed, he is talking about the growing gap between rich and poor. He is also talking about the Vietnam War. So he says, you hear him say in here, “A time comes when silence is betrayal. And that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.” So for some of us who come out of the movement, you talk about Abu Ghraib. You talk about Guantanamo: 500 prisoners, no benefit of counsel, no attorney. They can’t even contact their families.
There are issues that we can talk about today that you hear reflected in Dr. King’s words. When he says, “What we need is a radical redistribution of economic power,” that’s Dr. King in 1967-68. That’s the movement in 1967-68. That’s why Eyes on the Prize is so valuable. It’s not just about the history of the movement. It’s about the relevance of the history and the values of that movement to what we are dealing with today.
So let’s end because I want folks to have time for Q and A. Thank you very much.
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CROSSLEY: And it’s open for Q and A.
RICHARDSON: I’m always struck with how radical he is. There are many others who are more radical, but we have a national holiday for a man who is calling for redistribution of economic power and in such a way as to help the poor. We have people who call for radical redistribution of economic power these days to help rich people.
CROSSLEY: Questions. We want questions and not comments. So please feel free. And if you don’t ask questions, we are happy to talk to ourselves, so you will have to listen. So I suggest you get to the microphones to ask us some questions about the making of and/or the content of…. Let me say while you are moving to the mic, because I know you are going to, that the title of the series Keep Your Eyes on the Prize or Eyes on the Prize came from and old hymn, “Keep Your Hands on the Plow,” which was adapted for the civil rights movement. And the lyrics were adapted as well. And when we first heard Henry’s idea to use this as a title we thought it was awful. And the only thing I can say that I regret is that it is now a part of the American lexicon, and I wish very much that he had done something, patented it, or whatever you need to do to let folks know that this is where it originated in terms of its being used as it is.
VECCHIONE: Could I just piggyback on that. Steve Thayer, who was the series writer on the second series of Eyes and was a writer on some of the pieces within Eyes - One, he sent me about two years ago a memo that I sent Henry about the title. Because, see, when we first started the first iteration of the Eyes on the Prize, Henry had another title and it was called, “America, We Loved you Madly.” Now, I hated the title. I hated it.
RICHARDSON: We all did.
VECCHIONE: Yeah. So, in ’78, I’m saying, “Henry. I hate the title for that.” So I finally wrote a memo to Henry and to the staff that had finally come on board and it said, “Now, you all know I hate the title.” So I put down 32 freedom songs, first titles, and a number of other things. And No. 6 was…. I had put down, actually, “Keep Your Eyes on the Prize.”
And then it was…. My favorite one was, “Ain’t Going to Let Nobody Turn Me Around,” which was a mouthful. And a number of other songs. I also had penciled in No. 35, which was, “We Sang and Marched and They Beat the Hell Out of Us Anyway.” He did not choose that. So what was interesting is that, yeah, after he chooses Eyes on the Prize, there is all this question because he…. Steve says….
RICHARDSON: We fought over it.
VECCHIONE: Yeah. That’s it.
RICHARDSON: Yeah, we all fought.
VECCHIONE: PBS was not convinced that the audience would understand that title. They had really terrible…. Let’s not go there.
CROSSLEY: Question.
AUDIENCE: Yeah, there was an article in the paper the other day that all the copywritten material in Eyes on the Prize is expiring so it won’t be able to be screened any more. Could you just tell us more about what is going on with that?
VECCHIONE: It’s all true. Part of the problem was that when we were doing this series the rights were cleared for a certain period of time. I don't know if any of you have done films or you know that getting the rights is a very expensive proposition. And so Henry died. His sisters took over the company and just couldn’t pay attention to that. And it sort of lapsed. And now, of course, when you are getting the rights originally, who are you? You are Blackside, Incorporated. Who is that? What are you doing? Eyes on the Prize. What is that?
Now everybody knows who you are and what it is. So getting the rights cleared on the second go around, it was going to be expensive anyway because there is a lot to clear. It’s really going to be expensive. So one of our Blackside family, Orlando Bagwell, who is now at the Ford Foundation, has taken the first step of giving us a small grant, giving someone a small grant to try to explore how expensive it will be to get those rights cleared.
But for right now, it’s most available in public places like this, at the libraries and universities. I still speak about it, as we all do much of the time. And it is there.
RICHARDSON: You can screen it. You just can’t buy it.
VECCHIONE: You just can’t buy it.
RICHARDSON: But I would add because when I did this teacher training thing in Salem (this was an NEH thing) this past summer, they did not have some segments of it and that is the problem. Some of the schools only bought, for example, the first series. Never bought the second. And by the way, there will be a second article in The Washington Post tomorrow on this same issue. But the problem is not so much the footage, it’s the music.
And although they did not mention it, it’s EMI. EMI, who owns a lot of the rights to a lot of the music footage is the one who says, “Oh, no. We are not going to lower the rate for you.” And so that’s a big problem.
CROSSLEY: The estimate is right now that it would be about $5 million to clear -- very expensive.
RICHARDSON: Which is wildly more than it cost us to make the film.
CROSSLEY: Wildly more.
RICHARDSON: Wildly.
CROSSLEY: Question.
AUDIENCE: Whenever you start a journey or project, you always have expectations. Life doesn’t ever turn out as you expect. Looking back, what are your biggest surprises that you came across during this project?
CROSSLEY: Personally or in the film or in the content of the film?
AUDIENCE: Both.
CROSSLEY: Well, for me, I was completely taken with, and I’m on record for saying it was the best professional experience of my life to date. And it’s been many years since I’ve done it. And in many ways it was a wonderful, personal experience. And that’s because it’s rare to come to a project where everybody is on the same level of commitment. That does not mean that we kissed and sang, “Kumbaya” every day. I just want to make that clear. We did not. But it did mean that there is some power in knowing that the person working next to you is just as much invested in having this project be as good as it could be. So that’s an amazing experience. If you haven’t had it, I can only tell you it is valuable. My fear as we kept working and I kept being more emotionally invested in it and I wanted it to be as good as we all thought it could be, was that it was going to be horrible and we were going to be blamed for messing up some really pretty good history and a lot of good footage.
So I always tell the story of…. My nightmare would be Tom Shales of The Washington Post, who was a television critic, and his headline would be “Eyes on the Prize, No Prize.” And right below it, it would say, “If Callie Crossley hadn’t been on this series.” [Laughter.] So, anyways.
VECCHIONE: I do remember the moment at which we were screening it, and we were screening one of the cuts in these massive screenings that we would have with advisers. And the hairs rose on the back of my neck and I said, “By God. We are going to do it. We are going to make it.” There was spilled blood all over the floor. There were many fights to go. But I do remember that wonderful feeling of all that we have poured into it is going to come back to us.
I would say…. I’m just going to add one piece about surprises and about footage, because we were talking about footage before. And this is something perhaps people don’t think about, because everybody had cameras and everybody has video and everybody keeps these things. But that wasn’t true in the 1950s and ’60s when we were looking for footage from those time periods. People threw that stuff out.
Particularly in these early films, I remember my associate producer Lou Smith and I would be calling television stations in Alabama and they would say, “Oh, that old stuff. We threw that out years ago.” And it was heartbreaking, because we know there were more images. There were more stories to tell. It simply wasn’t true that the film was history at the time we were starting. It was just beginning to be really seen to be history. Which is why, of course, all the footage was so cheap at that time.
Now that everybody knows it’s valuable, they charge you for it. And so that first speech of Dr. King in Holt Street in Montgomery was somebody’s personal little cassette recording. Somebody had brought a little recorder into the church. No cameras had gone that we could find. There was no footage that we could find. What you saw was all stills because that was what there was. And it was a very, very elderly man. And we tracked him down and he said, yes, he had it. And could we call him back next week and he’d look in his attic. And he thought he still had it. And we called him back the next week and he had passed away. He had passed away! And, bless him, Lou who is a brilliant producer now himself and has unfair amounts of charm said to the widow, after many minutes of commiseration, “But can I still get the tape?” And he did.
CROSSLEY: And I want to add a couple of things. One of our other associate producers actually got a bill passed in Congress for us to use the footage that I used in show four from the March on Washington. There are now images that you may see often but nobody would use it because it was shot for the USIA. And the law was that if it is shot for the USIA, it may not be used by organizations. So she had to literally go get Ted Kennedy and whoever else was in at that time and say, “Can you push this through?” So we are in the Congressional Record as having gotten a law passed for use of that footage. And, finally, I would say, following on what Judith said, we got a cache of film from a young, white videographer in Alabama. Never shot film in his life. Had no idea what was on the film and had been, through many years, shepherding a cache of film in the basement of the television station because he thought you just shouldn’t throw it out. Didn’t know what it was. So when the same person, Lorrie Conn Levitt who got the bill passed -- you can see that she is a great producer now, too; you can see that she is determined -- found out that he had a cache of film she said, “We want to come and get it.” She got to the station and he said, “Well, this is great that you are here but I’m not going to let you have it.” So she is calling me on the phone saying, “He’s got it but he won’t let me have it.” And I said, “Oh, yeah. He’s going to let us have it.” So I met her there and I’m doing the fast-talking and she’s doing the taping up of the package. And we are going, “Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We know. We know your concern. Hmm hmm. Thank you.”
We didn’t know what we had. And when we got back and Jim and I are sitting in the edit room and we are just screaming, because it was all the local stuff. As Judy has said, people weren’t covering those local movements. And this was local government and we needed it to tell the story of what was going on in Birmingham. So those were some pretty spectacular surprises.
And Judith is being very modest here, but I also want to point that because she and Lou got that tape and made it a part of show one of Eyes, when CBS decided to do its story about Rosa Parks, they were able to have the actor who played King say the exact words, because that’s the only way anybody would know exactly what he said that night -- was from that tape.
RICHARDSON: I’ll mention, I guess my hopes and whatever, but in terms of that, just to know the archives of Blackside are now at Washington University. So what is interesting is that there are times when through those archives, that may be the only existing piece of footage of something that one of the networks has shot. Because, in fact, when all the networks change from film to tape, they would erase. They would shoot over things.
So there are many times when a local or a network program will call Washington University in St. Louis and ask if it has something from Eyes on the Prize because, in fact, the station or network does not have a copy any longer. In terms of what I would say I was concerned about, I was concerned that the story of the people that I most cared about, let’s put it that way, of the people who I most cared about, who had reared me in the movement, who I had seen just show amazing courage in the space of tremendous violence, that their story would not be well told. And that was my main concern.
And I think it was in the same way that Judith talks about that first screening. Feeling okay, you breathe a sigh of relief, “It’s going to be okay.” You can look these people in the eye again and feel good that the stories are being well told and in an honest manner.
CROSSLEY: I’m glad there are only two people in line because they are going to cut me off shortly. They told me to be cut off now. So I’m going to ask each of you to tell me your question and we will try to answer them together, if you will.
AUDIENCE: Hi, my name is Sonya. I’m an African Studies major at UMASS Boston over here. I’m here with my son and my nephew who is 14. And I just want to know, do you have any suggestions on how to keep the legacy of African Americans such as Dr. King alive in the young people? There is not much information out there in the public schools and in schools period. So I’m just wondering if you have any suggestions of how to keep their legacy alive in the young people today.
CROSSLEY: And let me get this gentleman behind you.
AUDIENCE: Mine was sort of a general question about the legacy of Martin Luther King. I was just wondering if you think sometimes when looking back on the life of Martin Luther King that the role that religion played in his life is sometimes overshadowed by the actions he did for the civil rights movement. And that sometimes it is forgotten that he was a reverend. And in all his speeches he was always mentioning God and specifically took things out of the Sermon on the Mount, repeated times. I’m just wondering if you thought that sometimes people forget that a lot of what he drew his strengths from was not only the community, but God and his Christian beliefs?
VECCHIONE: I actually can [simultaneous conversation] quickly, that after I said, “from the community,” I thought to myself, I should have said, “and the church.” So I am very much with you on that.
CROSSLEY: I’m going to flip the answer so that we answer your question first because I think answering on the young woman’s question would be a fabulous way to go out. Yes. I think it is overlooked. And as a matter of fact, the very last series commissioned by Henry before he died was one about faith and the roots of faith in the African American community. And part of that discussion had to do with civil rights leaders and their connection to faith and what it gave them to withstand some of the tragedy and the hardships that they endured.
And that series is called This Far by Faith: African-American Spiritual Journeys. It’s about to air again in February. It aired the first time in 2003. So, very much, yes. And, remember, even with 14 hours across the way and two series you don’t have time for everything. So some of the stuff we had to let you intuit that that was the base of it. And often people in the first series, particularly, refer to it. We just didn’t take the time to step back and say, “Now, what does that really mean?” But if you want to see that explored in some definitive way, certainly I would suggest to you This Far by Faith: African Americans Spiritual Journeys.
Either of you want to talk about the faith part?
RICHARDSON: Yeah. I will say, definitely, faith was important. However, and I’m speaking as somebody who comes out of SNCC and the student movement, and that what was wonderful about the movement, though, is that for those who might be atheists, for those who might be agnostic, for those who might be many other religions, who were part of that movement, what was really important was that it was always, “Whoever will, let them come.” That is was, “If you have our moral commitment about change in this country,” that the movement was welcoming to you and I think that was important as well.
CROSSLEY: So I think it is important for each of us to answer this nice young woman about what to do with her 14-year-old son. And I’ll start off by saying that it’s important to tell the stories. It’s important to show the videos if you have any. And, certainly, these are there in the libraries. But telling the stories I find is the most powerful of all.
This morning I began my day by doing a Martin Luther King breakfast out in Framingham. And the story I told was really about one of the other Brown cases. Because we always talk about the one that everybody knows and that is Linda Brown. But there are five cases. And people came up to me afterwards saying, “I didn’t know that,” because we don’t tell the stories. So I say it’s important to tell the story. There are lots of resources that weren’t available at the time. And I certainly think that the more you tell it and the more you open the door, then your child will take off from there. As a teenager myself, I was immersed in Before the Mayflower and Lerone Bennett and all of those stories because I just didn’t know about the slaves ships coming over and what did that mean and all of that.
So I know that it can have a great power and stay with you and make you want to explore some other things. And I will conclude by saying, at the same breakfast this morning, the winner of the Martin Luther King creative writing essay contest was a 12-year-old girl who wrote about Shirley Chisholm. And she learned about Shirley Chisholm by flipping through an Ebony magazine and said, “Who is that lady? I would like to know more.” And that’s what she wrote her essay on. And it really touched her because she was writing it not knowing that Shirley Chisholm, of course, was going to die just shortly into this new year. So it’s important to tell the stories, do the research, and just keep doing it all the time.
VECCHIONE: I certainly think that is true. And it’s what we’ve all spent our lives doing, is telling the stories. And trying to tell the stories fully, not just in a way that’s commercial or amusing or whatever, but in really deep ways that get into tough issues. Why do people make these choices? What mistakes do they make? How do you learn? How do you go forward? So certainly telling the stories.
The other thing that I would say, though, is thinking about how to live your life with some of these lessons in place. There was an Op Ed piece in The New York Times today talking about where are the moral leaders today? Where are the people speaking out in moral terms, not in terms that will necessarily move their careers forward because you saw in the clip that Judy showed that that was a showstopper. That is not the right word I used. It was a career stopper for Dr. King. But he felt he had a moral duty to speak out about injustice as he saw it. I think that that question of where we can individually speak out and act for our own beliefs, whatever your own beliefs are. I truly believe there are people of good faith on many, many different sides of questions. And, also, asking our leaders as well to recognize the moral element of what it is that they speak to.
RICHARDSON: I guess for me it is hearkening back to…. I mean it is true, civil rights, for example, is not in people’s curriculum. I mean Massachusetts is considered a liberal state. You know, we are a blue state. When I talk with teachers in terms of how much is given to the civil rights movement, it’s a week. I mean that is what you get. And this is Massachusetts. So you know what’s going on in South Carolina.
What’s really important is that I think we begin to get this because (I hate to use the word empowering), it is so empowering, particularly for young people, to see people that look like them -- black, white, latino -- walking up and doing things individually and as groups, that they are changing the world as we know it. And that they need to see themselves doing that, particularly today. I also think that it’s important to expose them as much as possible.
I remember being in one, and I’ll do this very quickly, one classroom and I was talking about a Latina who was in Mississippi, Maria Varela, who subsequently gets a McCarthy genius grant and stuff. And starts in Mississippi, comes in with a Catholic Youth Organization, CYO, and is in Mississippi, is in Selma, Alabama, then goes up in the hills of Tierra Maria, New Mexico, works on land grant. And then, because of her work forming the first community clinic in Tierra Maria in New Mexico, she then gets this McCarthy genius grant. Why I mention her, you know. So the teacher had asked the students to do an oral history and just go back to your parents, your grandparents, any member of your community and ask them what they were doing, whether they were doing anything at all during the civil rights movement.
One young man, a Latino, a Chicano, comes back and the teacher said to me, “It was the first lesson he had completed all year.” And the reason he did it was because he heard me talk about Maria, and then he goes back and it turns out his mother was involved with Cesar Chavez, with La Huelga, the grape pickers strike in California. She had never shared that with him.
I think about Freddy Leonard who was a seminal interview that Orlando Bagwell did for the third segment of the first series on sit-ins and freedom rides. And Freddy Leonard is talking about this incredible thing, to the point that teachers tell me that they think there was footage there. No. There was no footage. When he was talking about holding onto his mattress after he is put into Parchmen Prison and the jailers are trying to get the mattress from him and no, he won’t let it go.
And then finally, they bring one of the trustees. He says … and I mean trustees, you know, to beat up on him … and he said, “But I wouldn’t let my mattress go.” And then he said, “Then you could see the tears rolling down the trustee’s face.” And his line is, Freddy Leonard’s line is, “You know how your mother would say, as she was whipping you, ‘It hurts me more than it hurts you.’ Well, it hurt him more than it hurt me.”
Now, people still think that there is footage that goes with that story. It’s because Freddy Leonard was such an incredible storyteller. He had never told that story to his children. He and his wife had both been on the Freedom Ride, had never shared that with their children. And so part of what I hope, you know, what it will do is start talking about this movement.
CROSSLEY: Thank you, very much. Keep your eyes on the prize.