The Long Walk To Freedom
- Description
- Reviews
- Citation
- Cataloging
- Transcript
From the award-winning producer of A DREAM IN HANOI and BOYS WILL BE MEN comes this 30-minute documentary about how 12 ordinary people, from very different backgrounds, came to accomplish extraordinary deeds; deeds which changed the face of the nation. Together with tens of thousands of other Americans, they joined the Civil Rights movement to protest racial inequality, segregation, and discrimination in the 1960s.
THE LONG WALK TO FREEDOM demonstrates to today's young people that the struggle for civil rights, justice, and equality is indeed a 'long walk' - an ongoing challenge requiring the participation of successive generations. And it illustrates how ordinary individuals can become involved in social change.
'Mining a rich vein of the past, The Long Walk... reflects the history-making events of the 1960s civil rights era and the very personal journeys of the people who were an integral part of it.' Annie Nakao, San Francisco Chronicle
'The Long Walk to Freedom is a richly textured, deeply moving account of the civil rights movement that awakens viewers to the power and dignity of collective nonviolent action...a powerful antidote to alienation, cynicism and apathy, and a compelling invitation to become part of the solution...The activist's stories, supplemented with archival film footage, music, and photographic images, do more than inspire hope. They are skillfully interwoven to create an eight-chapter chronological history of the civil rights movement...As a package, The Long Walk to Freedom is an invaluable resource for teachers who wish to inspire civic involvement, critical thinking, values clarification, and active engagement with the past. The collection, while designed for high school students, can be adapted to younger and older audiences, and used in a wide variety of courses including U.S. history, African American history, social studies, U.S. government, and civics.' Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo, Professor of History specializing in civil rights movement history at Saint Mary's College of California
'I was captivated by the images, the words, the rhythms and the juxtapositions of this complex and thoughtful piece...
The format and the organization of ideas of the 30-minute documentary make the information accessible to a wide spectrum of people -- from average eighth graders in American history courses to their high school counterparts, eleventh graders, studying the same subjects at a higher level. Students in language arts courses, both at the middle and high school level, can also supplement or frame their studies of particular books...Most importantly, in my view, this DVD allows teachers to re-introduce themselves to a subject that is often reduced to a timeline or a one dimensional narrative, albeit one that highlights 'heroism' in the face of long-term unfairness and mistreatment. The interactive DVD allows for a new kind of engagement with the material -- so that questions and conversations can be sparked during the study itself, and again, perhaps more importantly, so that the social history of individuals, the choices they faced and made, take on a centrality in what people are exploring...
I highly recommend the use of this resource for students, teachers, and general community members who wish to school themselves on a most important aspect of US History -- and on ordinary people who did extraordinary things that continue to shape our lives today and in the future.' Jack Weinstein, Director, Facing History and Ourselves
'[The Long Walk to Freedom] serves up a respectable primer, enhanced with vivid specifics on the voting-rights marches and the uphill battle of hardships faced by the thousands that this film's dozen speakers represent, as familiar stock footage is mixed with moving black-and-white photographs...Recommended' Video Librarian
'Highly Recommended. The Long Walk to Freedom is an excellent presentation and overview of the civil rights movement that should be part of high school curriculum libraries and academic libraries with teacher education programs. It may also find a home in libraries with large African American history and oral history collections.' Educational Media Reviews Online
'Overall this is a high quality purchase for schools needing additional resources in this area.' Library Media Collection
'Outstanding... [The Long Walk to Freedom] will be welcome in academic and school libraries.' Library Journal
Citation
Main credits
Weidlinger, Tom (Screenwriter)
Weidlinger, Tom (Director)
Weidlinger, Tom (Film editor)
Morgan, Ruth (Producer)
Thomas-Cooke, Marsha (Narrator)
Other credits
Original music, Ed Bogas; photographs, Matt Herron.
Distributor subjects
African-American Studies; American Studies; Anthropology; Citizenship; Civil Rights; Conflict Resolution; Education; History; Human Rights; Humanities; Multicultural Studies; Race and Racism; Social Justice; Sociology; Women's StudiesKeywords
WEBVTT
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[music]
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This is about 12 ordinary young people,
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who helped change history.
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[music]
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They came from different racial
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and economic backgrounds, but
they all shared the conviction
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that racial oppression is wrong.
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[sil.]
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Together with thousands of other Americans
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they joined the Civil Rights Movement to
protest racial discrimination in the 1960s.
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[sil.]
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The civil rights veterans
visited with students
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at George Washington High
School in San Francisco,
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to share with them their
first hand experiences.
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The students responded with questions,
creative writing and a video project.
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At the heart of this
exchange between students
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and season activist is the
conviction that each new generation
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must find its own footing on
the long walk to freedom.
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The ongoing struggle for a just, a free,
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and a compassionate society.
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[music]
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I came up in a family
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that was very warm.
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We felt with each other.
We embraced each other.
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We touched each other,
we sang with each other.
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We were always in to something that
built what I would call community.
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[music]
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I couldn’t understand why when
we got in the White community,
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there were such a difference than what it
was in that African-American community.
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I had a breakdown when I was 12-years
old, at a minimum breakdown.
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Uh… let me put it in very crude terms.
I went crazy, okay
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and… and… and the reason I did
was I never could understand
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why I was told to go, get
in the back of the bus.
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I was told that I could not go
to certain stores in San Angelo,
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and purchase clothes to try them on.
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[music]
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I was about six grade when we moved to the
plantation and that’s when I first got an experience
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of which slavery was like. Slavery was
supposed to be old but it wasn’t,
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that’s what sharecropping is like.
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And a lot of people are malnourished.
There was a lot of
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uh… infant mortality and
there was no running water,
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and sometimes people whoever had eight to ten
children and they’re all sleeping in the same room.
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You didn’t dream of having your own bed.
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Poverty had been created in their mind.
They had a poverty, poor,
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slavery mentality themselves and uh…
this had been pressed upon them.
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Uh… they were afraid to breakout of that
because they don’t want the White men
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to think that they would trying to be a pity
Negroes cause a pity Negroes have head been hung
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just for being different like they would trying
to, be as good as the White men so to speak.
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I couldn’t use the main public library
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in Atlanta because it was
reserved for White people.
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No Blacks should come in
to the main public library
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It’s like there was total segregation,
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so there were dive stores where
if we wanted to come in,
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at the most we could do is maybe buy a hotdog in
the back. Couldn’t come in, couldn’t sit down
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just buy a hotdog in the back. If we wanted to
go to movie, well, you can only go on Saturday.
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And if you went on Saturday, you had to sit up in the
balcony. The rest of the week is for White people
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and White people could always
sit down on the main floor, so,
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it was like throwing it in our face.
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[music]
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I began to realize that,
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all the freedoms that I took for granted were
not guaranteed for everybody in this country.
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So it changed the direction of my life.
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I realize that nothing would stay the
same, people couldn’t stay the same.
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I happened to hear Dr.
King uh… on television
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and I got inspired. And then I started to say, \"My God!
You know, I mean there’s Black people in this country
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who are American citizens who
can’t vote?\" And I was in Korea
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in the army fighting for democracy.
It didn’t make sense to me,
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I didn’t learn these in school.
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But one of the things
that really impacted me
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and change me permanently was the lynching
of Emmett Till. He came down to Mississippi
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to visit some relatives there. And while
he was there, he was brutally murdered
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and his body butchered and
thrown in the river, why?
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He whistled at a White woman
and for this he lost his life.
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As I saw in Jet Magazine a picture
of Emmett Till and I realize,
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this could have been me, he’s my age.
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The 16th Street Baptist Church in
Birmingham was blown up by the Klan.
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Killing four little girls
who were in the basement
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where the bomb was placed.
Three weeks earlier I had been
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in that church with my
family enroute to Jackson.
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So, that bombing, we had a
very personal message for me,
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that could have happened three weeks before
and my children would have been dead.
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[music]
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I was very much afraid.
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When you went out in terms of
demonstrations people would spit on you,
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they would throw stones at you, they would
jeer at you, they call you a Nigger.
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[music]
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We were doing what we knew was right,
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and when you are right and you get your mind made up, there’s
nothing, there’s no force on earth they can stop you, nothing.
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[sil.]
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It’s a human thing
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about treating people
everybody like human beings.
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[music]
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Black people had to stand outside
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and wait for the bus. They
couldn’t go into the cafe and eat.
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The Whites wouldn’t let them and they had
tried to integrate that bus station before
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and it had always failed.
So we did and we got in,
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we sat down and uh… of course the
waitress came over and uh… you know,
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you could tell they were really angry and we, we were
an integrated group and, and she walks up to our table
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and she said, \"Uh…
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I wanna tell you, we don’t
serve Negroes in here.
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\"And this young guy, who was sitting next to me, he
says, \"Well, you know what? I didn’t order one.\"
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[sil.]
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And then, I remember there
was one girl there who said,
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\"Let’s just get arrested.\"
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[music]
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Of course, the police came out and they wanted to grab
us and we started singing louder and louder and louder.
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And lot of people locked arms, yeah.
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Here we are now sitting on the ground and
were just singing, it was just singing
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and the cops are trying to pull us apart.
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As I passed the Governor’s Mansion,
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I noticed a woman and her children sitting
on the sidesteps had turned out to be
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Mrs. Aileen Quinn from Calhoun, Mississippi
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and as I arrived, the police arrived.
Anthony, Mrs. Quinn’s 5-year-old
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was carrying a, an American
flag, a potent symbol
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of adherence to the laws of the United States
which are anti to equal rights for everyone.
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So the policeman was collecting these flags
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and as he grab for the little
boy’s flag, his mother said,
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\"Anthony, don’t you let that man take your
flag.\" And the policeman went berserk.
00:11:15.000 --> 00:11:23.000
[music]
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The background to this is that,
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about a month before, the Klan
had fire burn Mrs. Quinn’s home
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and Anthony Quinn was sleeping
in the front bedroom.
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So at five, her youngest
child was already a veteran
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of the Civil Rights struggle. The
Civil Rights movement opened my mind,
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opened my eyes and then, I started
thinking about, you know what?
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We also need a Civil Rights Movement in the southwest
where Mexicans lived because we don’t have one.
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So, I became one of the founders of our own Civil
Rights Movement called the Chicano Movement.
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I helped to organize nonviolent protest
in the schools, like this one.
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[music]
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I feel very strongly
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that we had a racist education, that we were not being
taught critical thinking skills to make it to college.
00:12:25.000 --> 00:12:29.999
[music]
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And were not being taught our
own history, our own culture,
00:12:35.000 --> 00:12:39.999
who we were, where we came from and
more importantly what we as a people
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had contributed to the
making of this nation.
00:12:45.000 --> 00:12:49.999
So we took to the streets in 1968, we did
our own Selma, Alabama in East Los Angeles.
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Ten thousand high school
students walked out of schools,
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all of the barrio ghetto schools in the east
side of Los Angeles. And we made headlines
00:13:00.000 --> 00:13:04.999
that first time in the history of this
country that Mexicans, any Latino had
00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:09.999
follow to footsteps of the Civil Rights
Movement in this country in the south.
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[music]
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Once you start to talk about freedom
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you cannot put bars on it. Just as
we were rejecting White supremacy,
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we brought with us into the movement
00:13:35.000 --> 00:13:39.999
all of the prejudices and all of the
assumptions from the outside society.
00:13:40.000 --> 00:13:44.999
And one of those assumptions was that
the girls would be typing the speeches
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and the boys would be giving the speeches.
In other words, there was a definite
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gender discrimination. And so in some of these
discussions, you know, your talking about freedom,
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liberation, what is gonna be
like not to have discrimination.
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There was a contradiction. We
said, \"Well wait a minute here.
00:14:05.000 --> 00:14:09.999
How can you talk about having White
people not discriminate against us
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and then you turn around and discriminate against
women?\" They said, \"That’s white women’s stuff.\"
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The most important thing is race,
gender is a secondary type of issue
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and you know, it took a long time
but we eventually we’re able to
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win over with the brothers to the concept that
you couldn’t call yourself a revolutionary,
00:14:30.000 --> 00:14:34.999
if in anyway you wanted to be prejudice
or discriminatory against women.
00:14:35.000 --> 00:14:43.000
[music]
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What do you want? Freedom.
00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:24.999
What do you want? Freedom.
And when do you want it?
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Now! Are you willing to fight for it?
Are you willing to die for it?
00:15:30.000 --> 00:15:34.999
That’s the way we had to get
pumped up, to go out, to protest.
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We were really in a, in a climate
00:15:40.000 --> 00:15:44.999
of total fear and we had to
00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:49.999
basically pump ourselves
up not to be afraid
00:15:50.000 --> 00:15:54.999
and the only thing that we
really had was each other.
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[music]
00:16:20.000 --> 00:16:24.999
Anyway you could uh… I tell you that
00:16:25.000 --> 00:16:29.999
just kept my legs moving and my mind was gone, but
my legs were moving to the rhythm of that song.
00:16:30.000 --> 00:16:34.999
We got there and hear you had
the whole line of police
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and they all had guns and clubs.
Dogs was turned loose on us.
00:16:40.000 --> 00:16:44.999
Hose,
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fireman’s hose, do you know
the power of fireman’s hose?
00:16:50.000 --> 00:16:54.999
Can you just imagine in your mind?
00:16:55.000 --> 00:16:59.999
And we drove through Mississippi
and this car pulls along side
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somebody sticks a shotgun out of
the window, and I’m driving, huh,
00:17:05.000 --> 00:17:09.999
and again like, like Jon was saying
00:17:10.000 --> 00:17:14.999
I guess, I didn’t have the sense to be
scared because this was, this was part of,
00:17:15.000 --> 00:17:19.999
this was the piece of the
pie that… that I took on.
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I remember that day, that night, that morning,
I remember going to jail. I remember you know
00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:29.999
uh… being told by a police, \"we’re
gonna give you a chance to run,\"
00:17:30.000 --> 00:17:34.999
okay, and I know, if,
well, what that meant.
00:17:35.000 --> 00:17:39.999
They want me to run and they will take target practice,
you know, and I keep my cool and I didn’t run
00:17:40.000 --> 00:17:44.999
instead I put my hands behind me and I said,
\"Put the cuffs on.\" And that’s what they did.
00:17:45.000 --> 00:17:49.999
I never forget that moment, in that moment to
me represents a lot more than just my own,
00:17:50.000 --> 00:17:54.999
my own moment. It had to do with
the fact that there were hundreds
00:17:55.000 --> 00:17:59.999
even minimum of thousands more young men
and women going to the same experience.
00:18:00.000 --> 00:18:04.999
That night they threw us in jail.
They didn’t have enough room
00:18:05.000 --> 00:18:09.999
for all of us, so they decided
that they would take us to a gym.
00:18:10.000 --> 00:18:14.999
And they locked us up in the gym
and we sang all night long.
00:18:15.000 --> 00:18:19.999
And finally they came about six
o’clock that morning and said,
00:18:20.000 --> 00:18:24.999
\"We gonna let you out because you
all, they suffer all with you people,
00:18:25.000 --> 00:18:29.999
you know, you… you really don’t and, and all of them
had cigars in them, all of that officers had cigars,
00:18:30.000 --> 00:18:34.999
billy clubs, guns all that kind of stuff,
you know. And they just stood there,
00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:39.999
shook their heads, they could not
fire them. How we would be so
00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:44.999
uh… engaging that we did not dissipate,
00:18:45.000 --> 00:18:49.999
we did not uh… disappear, uh…
but we just keep pushing.
00:18:50.000 --> 00:18:58.000
[music]
00:19:15.000 --> 00:19:19.999
And some of us actually believed
in nonviolence as a philosophy
00:19:20.000 --> 00:19:24.999
and some of us didn’t believed in nonviolence as a philosophy,
but they saw it as a tactic. It was actually useful, it worked.
00:19:25.000 --> 00:19:29.999
We were also very well-trained, we
didn’t just like go to a demonstration.
00:19:30.000 --> 00:19:34.999
We had workshops in nonviolence
uh… how to protect ourselves
00:19:35.000 --> 00:19:39.999
when they started hitting you. So,
this created a level of discipline
00:19:40.000 --> 00:19:44.999
amongst people that you could
actually overcome your fear
00:19:45.000 --> 00:19:49.999
for a larger objective. It’s
defiance without violence,
00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:54.999
a classic example of passive
resistance taken from Mahatma Gandhi.
00:19:55.000 --> 00:19:59.999
Montgomery’s Gandhi is the
Reverend, Martin Luther King,
00:20:00.000 --> 00:20:04.999
leader of the boycott. All in favor let
it be known by standing on your feet.
00:20:05.000 --> 00:20:09.999
[sil.]
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:14.999
When that moment comes,
00:20:15.000 --> 00:20:19.999
go into the situations
that we confront with
00:20:20.000 --> 00:20:24.999
a great deal of dignity,
sanity and reasonableness.
00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:29.999
We’re marching into a
demonstration and all of a sudden
00:20:30.000 --> 00:20:34.999
we see policemen on horses
with billy clubs coming to us
00:20:35.000 --> 00:20:39.999
and they’re marching and we had to
keep marching, we couldn’t stop.
00:20:40.000 --> 00:20:44.999
We were up against the people who were wanted to hurt
us in some way. And basically try to turn us around,
00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.999
but they were cowards. They didn’t actually wanna kill
us because they knew then they would have problems
00:20:50.000 --> 00:20:54.999
and so what we did was we called them on their
own cowardice. You can turn you back on me,
00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:59.999
but you cannot turn your back upon the
idea of justice. They would slink away
00:21:00.000 --> 00:21:04.999
that for all that bravado for
all of their racial epithets,
00:21:05.000 --> 00:21:09.999
that standing up to them with dignity
and courage made them fearful.
00:21:10.000 --> 00:21:14.999
Wherever, by clear and objective standards,
00:21:15.000 --> 00:21:19.999
states and counties are using
regulations or laws or tests
00:21:20.000 --> 00:21:24.999
to deny the right to vote then
they will be struck down.
00:21:25.000 --> 00:21:29.999
The Voting Rights Acts of 1965
00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:34.999
allowed the government to intervene
in uh… districts in the South
00:21:35.000 --> 00:21:39.999
where they could show that Blacks had been
systematically denied the right to register and vote.
00:21:40.000 --> 00:21:44.999
And we were there to get
people register to vote
00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:49.999
which sounds very easy. Go door to door and
say would you like to register to vote, Ma’m?
00:21:50.000 --> 00:21:54.999
But it was a little more difficult
than that. It was a tough sell.
00:21:55.000 --> 00:21:59.999
There were lots of things that
happen to Black folks in Mississippi
00:22:00.000 --> 00:22:04.999
who have the courage to register to vote. Sometimes their
houses were burned, they were beaten up they lost their jobs.
00:22:05.000 --> 00:22:09.999
So people were very reluctant to do
it and they were making decisions
00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:14.999
based on personal courage.
00:22:15.000 --> 00:22:23.000
[music]
00:22:25.000 --> 00:22:29.999
And so part of being in a Civil Rights Movement
is to learn how to actually talk to people.
00:22:30.000 --> 00:22:34.999
We basically had to find ways
00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:39.999
to encourage folks to struggle
and to fight the fear.
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:44.999
And there were a group of families who were willing
to stand up and say were gonna be a part of this.
00:22:45.000 --> 00:22:49.999
And that to me was extreme bravery.
00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:58.000
[music]
00:23:20.000 --> 00:23:24.999
This was a real people’s march. It
was lead by Civil Rights leaders
00:23:25.000 --> 00:23:29.999
but the… the march was
done by ordinary people
00:23:30.000 --> 00:23:34.999
walking from their own convictions
00:23:35.000 --> 00:23:39.999
that just had that feel to it.
I joined it from the first day
00:23:40.000 --> 00:23:44.999
and I had a, a knapsack
00:23:45.000 --> 00:23:49.999
and I, I determined that I was going to march
every step of the way by taking pictures.
00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:54.999
A lot of people had blisters
and they just went on.
00:23:55.000 --> 00:23:59.999
It rained, it was cold,
00:24:00.000 --> 00:24:04.999
it was not an easy thing to do and
people didn’t care, they just went on.
00:24:05.000 --> 00:24:13.000
[music]
00:24:25.000 --> 00:24:29.999
The sight of the march the,
00:24:30.000 --> 00:24:34.999
the image of hundreds and hundreds of
Black people joined by White people
00:24:35.000 --> 00:24:39.999
marching through rural Alabama.
00:24:40.000 --> 00:24:44.999
I mean, people came out to take
a look at this in astonishment.
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.999
And you could see it in the faces
of people watching the march.
00:24:50.000 --> 00:24:54.999
It’s almost like,
00:24:55.000 --> 00:24:59.999
these people were holding
a mirrors as we went by.
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.999
We could see ourselves in their eyes.
00:25:05.000 --> 00:25:13.000
[music]
00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:29.999
Everyday more and more people came until
finally the numbers are overwhelming
00:25:30.000 --> 00:25:34.999
masses of people march into Montgomery.
00:25:35.000 --> 00:25:39.999
Thousands and thousands and thousands
they just fill the streets,
00:25:40.000 --> 00:25:44.999
many change people and I think
the Civil Rights Movement
00:25:45.000 --> 00:25:49.999
sort of gain that momentum and
you felt like it was rolling
00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:54.999
and at the end of the march you just
felt like this was unstoppable.
00:25:55.000 --> 00:26:03.000
[music]
00:26:05.000 --> 00:26:09.999
You have to participate
00:26:10.000 --> 00:26:14.999
in your own destiny, you
can’t wait for it to happen.
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:19.999
It doesn’t matter how hard
or how dangerous it is,
00:26:20.000 --> 00:26:24.999
at some point if you were to survive you
have to participate in your own goals
00:26:25.000 --> 00:26:29.999
and your own destiny. And then you don’t bet
on it, but most of the time help comes.
00:26:30.000 --> 00:26:34.999
The reason I keep doing it
00:26:35.000 --> 00:26:39.999
is because every time we do something
there’s some difference that occurs.
00:26:40.000 --> 00:26:44.999
And, and you just have to look at it and
respond to it and say that’s where I’m going
00:26:45.000 --> 00:26:50.000
and that’s what I’m gonna do. Again,
it is to make life more human.
00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:23.000
Thank you
00:27:25.000 --> 00:27:29.999
To purchase a videocassette or DVD
of this program call 1(800)543 3764
00:27:30.000 --> 00:27:34.999
or visit www.bullfrogfilms.com.
00:27:35.000 --> 00:27:39.999
Additional resources are available
00:27:40.000 --> 00:27:45.000
at www.long-walk.com.
