Prior to production, all producers were required to participate in pre-production educational sessions in which experts on relevant subject matters, including scholars and actual participants in the events related to the series, were brought in to speak during a 10-day workshop. Held July 22 to August 2, 1985, it was internally called a "Civil Rights School."

Contains files of senior producer Judith Vecchione relating to the "Civil Rights School" held July 22 to August 2, 1985 . Materials include resumes of presenters, correspondence, schedules, lists of readings, multiple copies of all readings, handwritten notes from each session. Correspondence from Judith Vechionne to Henry Hampton on Civil Rights School schedule, draft 3.
 Day 1 readings: chapter "James Farmer: On Cracking White City" from book "My soul is rested" by Howell Raines ;  "There is a River" by Vincent Harding ; chapters "The Postwar Years" and "Fighting for the Four Freedoms" from book "From Slavery to Freedom: a History of Negro Americans" by John Hope Franklin ; chapter "The Vanishing Negro: Darwinism and the Conflict of the Races" from book "The Black Image in the White Mind" by George M. Frederickson ; chapter "Integration Among Combat Troops in World War II" from book "Afro-American History: the Modern Era" by Herbert Aptheker ; chapter "They Thought They Were as Good as We Are" from book "Blacks in America: Then and Now" by Edgar A. Toppin ; "The Boston Globe, Letters to the Editor" by Peter S. McGhee ; "Christian Science Monitor, Vietnam Series" by Arthur Unger.
 Day 2 readings: chapter "Prairie Fire" from book "Simple Justice" by Richard Kluger ; "Federalism and Civil Rights 1964" by Burke Marshall ; chapter "New Directions for the Court" from book "White Racism and the Law" by Lois B. Moreland ; chapter "The School Segregation Cases" from "Portrait of a Decade" by Anthony Lewis ; "To Fulfill These Rights" White House Conference June 1-6, 1966 address by Thurgood Marshall ; "Twenty Years of Civil Rights: How Firm a Foundation?" by Linda A. Greene.
 Day 3 readings: chapter "Civil Rights Movement" by Clayborne Carson from "Encyclopedia of American Political History" Jack P. Greene, editor ; "The Southern Freedom Movement" from Monthly Review, July-August, 1965 ; "Across the Rural South, Segregation as Usual" New York Times, 4/27/85 by G.R. Shipp ; "The Southern System: Beliefs, a Victory for Jim Crow"  ; chapter "The Cradle Rocks" from book  "The Struggle for Black Equality" by Harvard Sitkoff ; "Time Bomb: Mississippi Exposed and the full story of Emmett Till" by Olive Arnold Adams ; chapter Mississippi I:McComb" from book "SNCC: The New Abolitionists" by Howard Zinn.
 Day 4 readings: chapter "Preachers and Political Action" from book "The Black Preacher in America" by Charles V. Hamilton ; "The Road Since Brown: The Americanization of Race" by William Strickland from "Black Education: 25 Years After the Brown Decision" published in The Black Scholar, Sept-Oct. 1979  ; "Why We Can't Wait" by Martin Luther King, Jr. ; "Secret Meetings of the Six Who Shaped the Movement" from Ebony, April 1985 by James Farmer ; chapter "The August 28th March on Washington: the Castrated Giant" by Mike Thelwell from Presence Africaine.
 Day 5 readings: "Down to Now" chapters six and nine by Pat Watters ; "The Racial Crisis and the News Media: An Overview" by George P. Hunt" from book "Race and the News Media" edited by Paul L. Fisher and Ralph L. Lowenstein.
 Day 6 readings: excerpt from  "Alabama Review" July 1980 ; chapter "Montgomery, Cradle of the New Negro" from "Portrait of a Decade" by Anthony Lewis ; chapters "Introduction" and "The Crisis Breaks" from book "The Little Rock Crisis" by Tony Freyer ; "Barred at the Schoolhouse Door" from the Progressive July 1984 by Nora Sayre ; "Little Rock a Symbol Again: the Resegregation of Schools" the New York Times, 3/23/85 by Roy Reed ; 4 chapters "School Integration Statistics in the South-the Crawling Revolution" byAlan F. Westin, and chapter "The Techniques of Southern Tokenism" by J. Kenneth Morland, and chapter "The Facts of De Facto" and chapter "The Realities of Discrimination in San Francisco" by Irving Babow from book  "Freedom Now" edited by Alan Westin ; chart from "Law and Social Change" by Harrell R. Rodgers Jr. and Charles S. Bullock III.
 Day 7 readings: chapter "Public Accommodations and Service: the Appearance of Change" from book "Law and Social Change" by Harrell R. Rodgers Jr. and Charles S. Bullock III ;chapter "The Borning Struggle" by Bernice Reagon with John Lewis and Jean Smith from book "They Should Have Served That Cup of Coffee" edited by Dick Cluster ; "Southern Exposure" Spring 1981, editor Pat Bryant ; chapter "Public and Private Violence: the 1960s" from book  "From Race Riot to Sit-In: 1919 and the 1960s" by Arthur I. Waskow ; from "Journal of Southwest Georgia History" ; chapter "Birmingham - Nonviolence in Black, Violence in White" from book  "King: A Biography" by David L. Lewis ; from Newsweek, "Albany Movement" 12/25/61 and 9/10/62, and "Freedom Songs" 8/31/64 ; "Epilogue in Albany: Were the Mass Marches Worthwhile?" by Reese Cleghorn from The New Republic 7/20/63  ; "Freedom Songs" National 7/27/63 by Robert Shelton ; "Freedom Songs" from U.S. News & World Report 8/5/63 ; "SNCC & the Albany Movement" by Clayborne Carson and "De Lawd Descends and is Crucified: Martin Luther King, Jr. in Albany, Georgia" by John A. Ricks III, from The Journal of Southwest Georgia History  Fall 1984 ; chapter from "Down To Now" by Pat Watters ; chapter "Civil Rights and Self Improvement" from book "Crisis in Black &  White" by Charles E. Silberman ; article "With the People" by James Orange.
 Day 8 readings: chapter "Mississippi Challenge" from book "In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 60s" by Clayborne Carson ; chapter "The Right To Vote" from book "Federalism and Civil Rights" by Burke Marshall ; "The Negro in America" from Newsweek 7/29/63  ; chapter "Selma and the Voting Rights Act: Commencement and Climax" from book "Protest at Selma" by David J. Garrow ; chapter from "Selma, 1965" by Charles E. Fayer ; chapter "The Watts Ghetto Uprising" from book "Afro-American History: The Modern Era" by Herbert Aptheker.
 Day 9 readings: chapter "Mississippi Freedom Democrats: Bankruptcy of the Establishment" from book "Black Power" by Stokely Carmichael and Charles V. Hamilton ; chapter "Civil Rights and Self Improvement" from book "Crisis in Black and White" by Charles E. Silberman.
 Day 10 readings: 4 chapters "When does History Happen?" and chapter "History by the Ounce" and chapter "The Historian's Opportunity" and chapter "Problems in Writing the Biography of General Stilwell" from book "Practicing History" by Barbara Tuchman ; chapter "The Civil Rights Movement: What Good Was It?" from book "In Search of our Mothers' Garden" by Alice Walker ; "Vietnam: A Television History" Media Research and Some Comments by Lawrence W. Lichty ; "Journalistic Standards for CBP-funded Programs" by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.