Transforming AmericaFinal Script

TITLE:Lesson 17: All God’s Children

WRITER:Ken Harrison

PRODUCER:Julia Dyer

DRAFT:FINAL

DATE:April 12, 2005

Transforming America • TA117 – FINAL • All God’s Children  4/12/05  1

VIDEO AUDIO

Introduction: (2:49)
  1. March on Washington footage; caption: “March on Washington, August 1963”
  1. Flyer announcing March on Washington (see research)
  2. Dianne Swann-Wright on camera
Super: Dianne Swann-Wright
  1. Family photos (uncles?)
/ 60s R & B SONG(Curtis Mayfield): People get ready…. There’s a train a-coming…. You don’t need no baggage… You just get on board…
DIANNE SWANN-WRIGHT(10:26:56): When Martin Luther King had the March on Washington, I remember that my uncles went but that none of the women in the family or any of the children were allowed to go because it was considered to be something that perhaps would not be safe. And so I remember my unclescame back and talked about what a wonderful time it was and what a marvelous speaker Martin Luther King was. And they really thought that King was, to quote them, “about something.”
  1. Photos of Clayborne Carson at march, if possible.
  1. Clayborne Carson on camera
Super: Clayborne Carson, StanfordUniversity
  1. King and monuments
/ MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed…
CLAYBORNE CARSON (08:02:54): I was there. That was one of the major early experiences in my life, as a teenager, to see Martin Luther King up on the podium and really speaking to the nation and addressing the basic issues, as he alone could do.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.
CLAYBORNE CARSON: He could talk about the founders of the nation and how they had essentially signed a promissory note. And now it was time to deliver on that promise.
  1. Martin Luther King speech
/ MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: ….just as I have a dream….that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.
  1. Julian Bond
Super: Julian Bond, NAACP Board of Directors
  1. Bond at March?
  1. Washington March footage, wide shots
/ JULIAN BOND (22:23:20): In every respect, this is a perfect expression of an interracial gathering of thousands of people in Washington, millions of people watching it on TV. So what this does is it gives the Civil Rights Movement great respectability.
  1. Archival of MLK at March on Washington
/ MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, we will be able to speed up that day when allof God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”
Segment #1: We Shall Overcome (5:37)
Learning objective: Analyze the leadership and tactics of the civil rights movement in the early 1960s.
  1. Sit-ins
/ CIVIL RIGHTS SONG: We shall overcome…
NARRATOR: In 1960, college students and other young people had begun to challenge segregation directly, holding nonviolent sit-ins at white-only lunch counters across the South.
  1. Julian Bond
Super: Julian Bond, NAACP Board of Directors
  1. Sit-ins
/ JULIAN BOND (22:07:50): It’s action by ordinary people – college students, high school students in some places – striking a blow against segregation, using this new tactic, nonviolence, passive resistance to segregation. Here is an explosion of the spirit of resistance that’s been ever present, but now all of a sudden in 1960, here are literally hundreds of thousands of young people doing this. And to non-participants I think it sent a powerful message.
  1. Freedom Riders
  2. Violence at sit-ins, etc.
/ NARRATOR: The following year, black and white Freedom Riders tried to integrate interstate transportation by riding buses from Washington, D.C. to New Orleans. All of these efforts met with extreme and often violent reactions from southern whites.
  1. Julian Bond
  1. Violence against protestors
/ JULIAN BOND (22:11:51): It’s this historic Southern resistance to Northerners telling them how to live. It comes from the Civil War, of course, and it’s lasted ever since, even up to this day. And I think it came from opportunistic politicians who whipped up this anti-black sentiment, this anti-integration sentiment, who profited from it.
  1. Segregation visuals, “Whites Only,” signs, etc.
  1. JFK and Congress
/ NARRATOR: Despite numerous U.S. Supreme Court rulings and federal directives, racial segregation continued to be a fact of life in most of the South. Southern whites monopolized state power. The large bloc of southern Democrats in Congress forced the president, John F. Kennedy, to downplay civil rights legislation.
  1. William Chafe
Super: William Chafe, DukeUniversity
  1. President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy working together
  1. Kennedy and Congress
/ WILLIAM CHAFE (12:05:36): There was a very strong political fear that they were so indebted to Southern congressmen and senators and governors that they felt that given this very slim margin of victory they’dhad in 1960, they had to be very, very timid and careful…and they were so.
  1. Birmingham, business as usual before demonstrations.
/ NARRATOR: In the spring of 1963, the focus of the Civil Rights movement turned to Birmingham, Alabama.
  1. Valinda Littlefield on camera intercut with:
Super: Valinda Littlefield, University of South Carolina
  1. Birmingham, business as usual – signs of segregation, “Whites Only” signs, etc.
/ VALINDA LITTLEFIELD (06:19:09): Birmingham is always seen as the bedrock of racism and it certainly lived up to that vision that we have of Birmingham. Especially civil rights activists thought if we can just convert Birmingham, this is hell, and if we can convert it, the others will fall. So that’s the reason Birmingham is so important in this movement.
  1. MLK and associates
  2. Meeting at 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham
/ NARRATOR: The battle to desegregate Birmingham began in April. Local African-Americans, working closely with Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, forged a tightly knit community of struggle. Much of the work was done out of the SixteenthStreetBaptistChurch.
  1. Birmingham demonstration, no violence yet; police make peaceful arrest
/ Daily marches began on April 3rd and each day the police intervened.
  1. MLK arrested, put in jail
/ NARRATOR: On April 12th, King himself was arrested. From his jail cell he wrote an open letter, explaining and defending the actions of the protesters.
  1. Actor silhouette
  2. Tilt down letter
/ MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: When you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, when you are forever fighting a degrading and degenerating sense of “nobody-ness”, then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait.
  1. Clay Carson on camera
Super: Clayborne Carson, StanfordUniversity / CLAYBORNE CARSON (8:00:49): The letter from Birmingham jail was King’s, I think, most profound attempt to influence public opinion during the Birmingham protest to explain why there was this urgency, why protest was necessary, why civil disobedience was necessary to achieve social justice.
  1. William Chafe on camera
  2. Bull Connor
  3. Televised Birmingham violence: fire hoses, dogs, etc.
/ WILLIAM CHAFE (12:07:53): What really made it work was the very bold decision by King and the SCLC people to have women and young people lead the demonstration. So when you do that and you have cameras showing the country, every night, the way in which these police dogs are attacking women and children, and the way the fire hoses are literally lifting them up off their feet and throwing them against walls, you have the most vivid possible demonstration of what the Civil Rights movement is all about and why change has to happen.
  1. Julian Bond on camera
  1. Kennedy and other members of administration on telephones, etc.
/ JULIAN BOND (22:20:09): Birmingham makes the Kennedy administration do what they had hoped never to do and that is to take sides. And they’re forced, in this instance, to take sides with Martin Luther King, with the movement, with the protesters. It’s Birmingham that made civil rights matter.
  1. John F. Kennedy and Burke Marshall
  1. Negotiations and/or headlines
/ NARRATOR: President Kennedy sent hisAssistant U.S. Attorney General for Civil Rights to negotiate a settlement ending the violence, and granting the protestors most of their demands.
  1. Archival: JFK
/ NARRATOR: Then, in June of 1963, he introduced sweeping civil rights legislation.
  1. JFK speech 6/11/63
/ PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: We are confronted primarily with a moral issue. It is as old as the scriptures and as clear as the American Constitution. The heart of the question is, whether all Americans are to be afforded equal rights and equal opportunities, whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.
Segment #2: The Great Society (9:15)
Learning Objective: Analyze the major legislative responses during the era including the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Great Society.
  1. Headlines, photos of church bombing
/ NARRATOR: On a Sunday morning in September 1963, violence in Birmingham again rocked the nation. A bomb exploded in the SixteenthStreetBaptistChurch, injuring twenty people and killing four little girls.
  1. Telegram from MLK(?)
  2. Funeral footage intercut with
  3. Photos of girls in life
/ Actor as MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.: Dear Mr. President, I shudder to think what our nation has become when Sunday school children and their teachers are killed in a church by racist bombs.
  1. Kennedy at Love Field before assassination
/ NEWS REPORTER: The President and Mrs. Kennedy have arrived at Dallas Love Field…
NARRATOR: Only two months later, shocking violence would again touch the lives of Americans and greatly affect the Civil Rights movement.
SFX: 3 Gun shots
  1. Judy Yung intercut with:
Super: Judy Yung
  1. News reports of assassination
/ JUDY YUNG (06:17:57): I get this phone call from my sister and she said President Kennedy has been assassinated. And then I turn on the television and then they played over and over again that scene when he was shot in the car in the motorcade.
WALTER CRONKITE:….President Kennedy shot today just as his motorcade left downtown Dallas. Mrs. Kennedy….
  1. Dianne Swann-Wright
Super: Dianne Swann- Wright
  1. Walter Cronkite broadcast
/ DIANNE SWANN-WRIGHT (12:18:17): I was in junior high school and there was a public announcement…and I remember going home and sitting in front of the television with members of my family.
WALTER CRONKITE: From Dallas, Texas, the flash apparently official…
DIANNE SWANN-WRIGHT: Actually seeing Walter Cronkite come on and say that the president had been shot, and taking his glasses off and putting them on the desk in front of him. And I remember thinking, I think he’s crying.
  1. Photo of LBJ being sworn in on Air Force One
/ NARRATOR: Just hours after the murder of the president, Vice-President Lyndon Baines Johnson of Texas took the presidential oath of office aboard Air Force One. Almost immediately, Johnson sought to marshal the grief of the nation behind the cause of Kennedy’s Civil Rights bill, that had been languishing in Congress for months.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: This bill is going to pass if it takes us all summer.
  1. Bruce Schulman on camera intercut with:
Super: Bruce Schulman, BostonUniversity
  1. Details of Act
/ BRUCE SCHULMAN (03:19:33): He clothed himself in the legacy of the martyred president and, even when he was going well beyond what President Kennedy hoped to achieve, he used the mantle of the assassinated…of the assassinated ex-president as a way of trying to build support for his program.
  1. Johnson working on passage of bill
/ NARRATOR: Faced with a filibuster by Southern senators, Johnson used his own matchless political skills to push the bill through.
  1. Schulman on camera intercut with:
  1. Johnson working with legislators, signing bills, etc. (no “treatment” yet)
  1. Johnson using height and charisma to give treatment to legislators (famous series of photos in which he browbeats a much smaller man)
/ BRUCE SCHULMAN (03:02:34): He was a master of the political process, better than almost anyone else of his generation. He rested his skill on knowing intimately the needs, wants, desires and fears of all of the legislators. But more than anything else it was his skill in face to face communication and lobbying, literally getting in people’s face. And that defined the Johnson treatment – a mixture of cajoling, flattering, browbeating, threatening, praising, that worked wonders.
NEWSREEL ANNOUNCER: …Congress passes the most sweeping civil rights bill ever to be written into the law.
  1. Signing of Civil Rights Act
/ NARRATOR: After 83 days of debate, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act in July of 1964.
  1. Bruce Schulman on camera
/ BRUCE SCHULMAN (03:07:39): The Civil Rights Act in 1964 may be the great achievement of the liberal era of the 1960s and of the Johnson presidency. More than anything else, it led to the end of the system of segregation in the United States and to the integration of public life.
  1. Julian Bond
Super: Julian Bond, NAACP Board of Directors
  1. Footage of blacks being able to enter restaurants, movies, etc.? or
  2. Restrictive signs from before Civil Rights Act.
/ JULIAN BOND (22:27:23): It had real procedures against petty apartheid – lunch counter, hotel, restaurant, movie theater segregation – just lifted this awful stigma that somehow black people weren’t good enough to go to this movie, weren’t good enough to go to this restaurant…just wiped that away almost instantaneously. And it also had educational provisions that helped advance what Brown had begun almost ten years earlier.
  1. Selma, Alabama violence: protesters coming over bridge, being beaten.
/ NARRATOR: The following year, the violent suppression of a voter registration drive in Selma, Alabama added momentum to Johnson’s push for federal voter protection.
  1. Bruce Schulman on camera
/ BRUCE SCHULMAN (3:14:18): With the eyes of the nation and the world upon what was happening in the South, Johnson felt that he had to take a principled stand.
PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON:What happened in Selma is part of a far larger movement which reaches into every section and state of America.
  1. Steven Lawson on camera
Super: Steven Lawson, RutgersUniversity / STEVEN LAWSON (07:05:06): In March of 1965, Johnson went before the country and issued an address to both houses of Congress in which he calls upon the lawmakers to pass a Voting Rights Act. And this was now the President of the United States using the anthem of the Civil Rights movement.
  1. Archival: LBJ speech to Congress, “We Shall Overcome”
/ PRESIDENT LYNDON JOHNSON: …and we shall overcome!
  1. Steven Lawson
  2. Southern blacks registering to vote, winning elections
/ STEVEN LAWSON (07:05:06): The results were spectacular. By 1968, approximately 60% of African-Americans in the South were registered to vote. And now you began to see more black elected officials in the South.
  1. Julian Bond
/ JULIAN BOND (23:02:43): But at the same time it also helped to make Southern politics, if anything, more conservative.
  1. Bruce Schulman
  1. Johnson and Bill Moyers
  1. Archival of angry white politicians: e.g., George Wallace, Strom Thurmond, etc.
/ BRUCE SCHULMAN (03:11:30): After the achievement of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Act, when those bills had finally been enacted, Johnson turned the next morning to Bill Moyers, one of his top White House aides, and said, “We’ve just delivered the South to the Republican Party for my lifetime and yours.” And that prediction turned out to have been largely true.
  1. Lyndon Johnson in younger days in Texas
/ NARRATOR:Johnson’s commitment to civil rights was part of a larger vision to transform society by taking the ideas of the New Deal to a new level.
  1. Archival: Johnson speech, June 26, 1964
/ PRESIDENTLYNDON JOHNSON: The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talent. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce, but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community.
  1. Valinda Littlefield on camera
Super: Valinda Littlefield, University of South Carolina
  1. Crowds of people, late 1960s
/ VALINDA LITTLEFIELD (07:07:20): His idea of the great society is that you improve everybody from the bottom up. And if you can do that, then the whole society moves forward and it does become a Great Society.
  1. Possibly a Social Security film from the period announcing new benefits?
/ NARRATOR: Reporters called it “a political miracle” as the 89th Congress passed measures mandating an anti-poverty program, education subsidies, a massive housing program, urban renewal, arts funding, consumer protection, highway safety, pollution control, environmental preservation and more.
  1. Bruce Schulman on camera
/ BRUCE SCHULMAN (3:25:27): Central to the idea of the Great Society was that there would be something for everyone, that you would improve not only people’s standards of living, but the quality of life in the United States. A cleaner environment, for instance, would be part of that; opportunities for higher education and the life of the mind. But the real focus would be on those people left behind by the prosperity of the 1960s.
NARRATOR: The most far-reaching of the Great Society programs, Medicare and Medicaid, extended government-financed medical care to the elderly and the poor.
  1. Archival of Johnson’s 1964 State of the Union address, on camera
/ PRESIDENTLYNDON JOHNSON: This administration today, here and now, declares unconditional war on poverty in America.