Video: Eyes on the Prize, “No Easy Walk, 1962-1966”

Today we will watch a video in USU 1300, “No Easy Walk, 1962-1966,” from the documentary series Eyes on the Prize, about the Civil Rights Movement. The video begins in 1962, but several events important to civil rights had occurred in the 1940s and 1950s. These included:

1948: President Harry Truman was appalled by accounts of the lynching of black servicemen returning to the South after World War II, and angry that ending segregation in the military was proceeding slowly. He issues an executive order racially integrating all branches of the U.S. military. 1954: The U.S. Supreme Court rules unanimously in the case of Brown versus the Topeka, Kansas Board of Education that segregated education is unequal, and that all segregated schools must be integrated with “all deliberate speed.” 1955: Rosa Parks refuses to give up her seat on a bus in Montgomery, Alabama to a white passenger, and begins the Montgomery bus boycott. This forced the integration of public transit in the city and led to the national prominence of a young minister in Montgomery, the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

This video focuses on Martin Luther King’s efforts in the early 1960s to integrate two southern cities – Albany, Georgia and Birmingham, Alabama. Unlike some other cities in the South, these two cities had refused all calls to end segregation. To achieve victory, King realized that he had to do two things: he had to gain the support of the federal government and president John F. Kennedy, and he had to get national media coverage of his protests. King achieves both of these goals, and his efforts culminate in the famous “I Have a Dream” speech of 1963, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Monument in Washington D.C.

King is not the only individual highlighted in this video. Other important individuals and groups include civil rights organizations such as the SCLC, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and SNCC, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. Opponents to civil rights in the video include the governor of Alabama, George C. Wallace, and Bull Connor, the police chief of Birmingham.