Television News of the Civil Rights Era, 1950-1970, aims to collect, digitize, and present in streaming video format over the World Wide Web television news footage from the period and to make these valuable materials available to scholars, teachers, and students. The current archive contains films from the nightly news from two local television stations in Virginia--WDBJ (CBS) Roanoke and WSLS (NBC) Roanoke. In this initial installment we have digitized over 230 films. This rare footage includes full speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Richard M. Nixon, the governors of the Commonwealth of Virginia, as well as original footage of school desegregation, public meetings, local debates over civil rights matters, and interviews with citizens. This project is currently a research work in progress. We have received generous support from the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and the Virginia Department of Education as well as support from the University of Virginia Alumni Association's Mead Endowment. We have worked with the Robertson Media Center at the University of Virginia, especially Michael Tuite and Bruce Johnson. In Fall 2004 and Spring 2005 two classes at the University of Virginia have contributed to this project. Students in HIUS 401, a history major thesis seminar, wrote papers on the civil rights era in Virginia and several of the papers have been published as student essays in the interpretive section of the site. In Spring 2005 students in HIUS 403 and MDST 465 worked to produce a documentary film on the civil rights era in Virginia based on the films in this archival collection. They added materials to the project and conducted important research for the project. We are continually updating this project as research on these films progresses. Wherever possible we have tried to identify unclear dates and people in the films. We thank you for your consideration as we work to develop a comprehensive catalog and index of films of the civil rights era in Virginia. If you have information about news footage or would like to donate news footage to this project, please contact: Scot French |
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