Day 6:
Program I: Montgomery
Program II: Little Rock

Tape 1 to 2A

Executive Producer Henry Hampton begins the second week of "Civil Rights School" with some observations on the dynamic relationship between leaders and people as well the cycles of transformational change.

Professor J. Mills Thornton presents an overview of the people and politics that culminated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott of 1955-56, "the first event of the civil rights movement." Before taking questions, Thornton makes several initial points:

1) The Montgomery Bus Boycott did not begin as an attempt to end segregation but rather to arrive at  more equitable seating arrangements based on the practices of cities like Mobile. 2) The presence of Alabama State College buttressed a black middle class that was already pushing reforms and making political gains. 3) The boycott represented an overlap of reformist aims and the experiences of lower income blacks who used the transportation system. 4) Martin Luther King had nothing to do with the coming of the boycott but everything to do with sustaining it.

Dr. Thornton also notes that the boycott would not have happened without the efforts of JoAnn Robinson. A professor of English at Alabama State College, Dr. Robinson spread the news of Rosa Parks' arrest with little more than a mimeograph machine.  He also believes that, during this time, Dr. King learned that only when segregation is put under pressure does it reveal its intractablity; his career becomes revealing the system under which blacks live.

Tape 2A to 3A

Leslie Dunbar, a political scientist and former head of the Field Foundation, talks about funding the movement, especially in the areas of  voter registration and education.

While support from philantrophies like the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ebbed and flowed, Dunbar posits that the load was carried by the Field Foundation, the New World Foundation and, especially, the Taconic Foundation under Stephen Currier, who raised hard money for the movement.  Currier and his wife, Audrey, a direct heiress of the Mellon family, died mysteriously in 1967.

Tapes 3B & 4A

Professor and author Tony Freyer reviews the events leading up to the 1957 desegregation of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas.  He explores the social and political climate of the city and state as well as the legal clash over "interposition" - the asserted right of states to protect their interests from federal violation.

Freyer admits that although he began his study convinced he would discover absolute truths, he discovered only moral ambiguity. This is perhaps best represented in the figure of Governor Orval Faubus - who, according to Freyer, nearly destroyed his reputation as a political progressive and racial moderate by his willingness to compromise with segregationists in order to advance his agenda.

Tapes 4A & B

Ernest Green, one of the Little Rock Nine, shares the story of his life as a senior at Central High and the ways that it affected him.

Leslie Dunbar makes some closing observations about Little Rock.