A CLEAR CHANNEL
PART I
TIMESTA CAPTION (C)
NARRATION (N)
MP
0.00-0.15 Men often hate each
other because they
fear each other; they
fear each other
because they don't
know each other;
they don't know
each other because
they cannot
communicate; they
cannot communicate
because they are
separated. --Martin
Luther King (1958)
AUDIO (A)
Music: Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
VIDEO (V)
IMAGE(I)
MAP
USA
TIMELIN CONTEXT
FOOTNOTE
E
1958
We begin with this quote from Stride Toward Freedom (1958), Martin Luther King’s memoir about race relations
King, Martin Luther.
before, during, and after the Montgomery Bus Boycott, to offer as a baseline for our analysis the optimism of what King Stride Toward
would later describe as just “one phase in the civil rights revolution” (3, Where). According to the line of argument
Freedom: The
evident in this quote, segregation itself was what kept citizens from communicating, and that lack of communication led Montgomery Story.
to the hate and fear that defines racism. By extension, it seems not unreasonable to assume that once desegregation Harper Collins, 1958.
removed that legal line separating the races, the resulting communication should have been able to push racism into
America’s distant past.
Of course this didn’t happen. In fact not even King himself believed desegregation would “cure” racism in America.
Again, civil rights legislation defined and enforced by the federal government was just “one phase in the civil rights
revolution” (King 3). As King warns in his final book Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967),
penned just one year before his assignation, “The persistence of racism in depth and the dawning awareness that
Negro demands will necessitate structural changes in society have generated a new phase of white resistance in
North and South” (King, 12). Decades later, scholars contributing to critical race studies (“criticalists”) would argue
legislation like the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1964 and the Voting Rights Act (1965) could correct only the most
obvious and extreme forms of racism, not the racism persisting in everyday life. Such racism is institutionalized,
embedded into the fabric of ordinary life in America, making it largely invisible even as its effects continue to fill our
nation’s jails (see Alexander’s The New Jim Crow), segregate our communities, and inequitably distribute America’s
wealth (see also Conley, Being Black, Living in the Red).
The following remix and the scholarly annotations that surround it take this tension into one local context, teasing apart
the critical race narratives embodied in local attempts to disrupt the racism that persists in everyday life across the
nation. We are concerned here with communication and the “rhetorical constructions of race” (Delgado) that both
challenges and enables racial justice. Following Michael Omi and Howard Winant, we treat racial formation as “the
process by which social, economic, and political forces determine the context and importance of racial categories, and
by which they are in turn shaped by racial meanings” (61). Like Richard Delgado, Derrick Bell, Patricia Williams, and
other criticalists, we work from the assumption that, as Morris Young explains, “there is a rhetorical dimension to race
as it is deployed strategically by both dominant and marginalized cultures who seek to use race persuasively for their
own purposes” (84). Our goal in the following is to rhetoricize race, not to reify its existence but to remedy its effects
(Ratcliffe). We hope to add a rural dimension to George Lipsitz’s ground-breaking study of How Racism Takes Place
(2011), where white identity is place-bound and skews life chances along racial lines in rural spaces just as clearly as
it does in the urban areas that are the focus of Lipsitz’s study.
Bibliography
Delgado, Richard. The Rodrigo Chronicles: Conversations about America and Race. NYU Press, 1996. Print.
---, ed. Critical White Studies: Looking Beyond the Mirror. Temple UP, 1997. Print.
King, Martin Luther. Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community. Beacon Press, 1968. Print.
Lipsitz, George. How Racism Takes Place. Temple UP, 2011. Print.
Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd Ed.
Routledge, 1994. Print.
Williams, Patricia. Alchemy of Race and Rights: Diary of a Law Professor. Harvard UP, 1992. Print.
Young, Morris. Citizenship, Ethnic Expressions, and the Rhetorics of Hawaiianness.” College English 67.1 (Sept.
2004): 83-101.
Page 1 of 55
PERMISSIONS
Fair Use
We take as a given the
important role played
by the doctrine of Fair
Use, especially as
copyright law (can)
encourage creativity
and especially as this
particular treatment
and the application of
the Remixing Rural
Texas (RRT) prototype
to it further establishes
it as appropriately
“Fair Use” in
compliance with all
four factors of section
107 of the Copyright
Law.
Where possible, we
draw from materials in
the Public Doman or
holding Creative
Commons licensing
options that allow the
uses we require.
Where possible,
materials we have
created for this remix
hold the CC licensing
option AttributionShareAlike. Please
see “Permissions” for
an extended
discussion of these
issues and links to
relevant source
materials.
MISCELLANEO
US
1.
17-22.00 “Crisis in Levittown”
16-21
(1957)
Music: Brewer, Simon, Crisis in Levittown. (8:15PRS. “Memorial Park.” 8:20). Prod. Lee Bobker and
Freeplaymusic.com. Lester Becker. 1957.
BMI, Web. June 2012. Dynamic Films. Academic
Film Archive of North
America. Archive.org. Web.
Apr. 2012.
Levittown, 1957
PA
Woven throughout our remix are excerpts from several documentaries produced in the 1950s and 1960s that illustrate
key tensions surrounding communication about race and racism in America.
Crisis in Levittown is one such documentary. Indeed, we will return frequently to Crisis, for reasons we discuss in
greater depth later. Essentially, this 32-minute film from 1957 is a landmark documentary about one all-white
community’s response to their first African American neighbors. We are particularly drawn to the filmmaker’s attempts
to understand the local responses to desegregation (some pro, many con). Interviews with local citizens reveal much
about the complexity of racism in America at the time.
Levittown, Pennsylvania, was established in 1952 as a planned community for post-war America’s new middle class.
The community offered its residents the opportunity to purchase a home, rather than rent. The American Dream that
developer William Levitt offered to buyers attracted a mix of German, Polish, Hungarian and Irish residents, but when
the first black family moved into the community, a riot erupted, lasting 14 days and attracting the nation’s attention.
Our remix is about communication following desegregation of higher education not housing, but the themes of fear,
misinformation, and “noise” are certainly present in all of the key issues alternatively described as “The Negro
Problem” and the “Civil Rights Movement,” depending on one’s perspective. Our remix also focuses on these issues in
the south, but we draw from this example of Levvittown’s “crisis” as one of many such examples occurring in the North
that illustrate racism’s ubiquity as well as its complexity.
Bibliography
Dailey, Kate. “Return to Levittown: A Suburban Dream Turns 60.” BBC News Magazine. Nov. 7, 2011. Web. 17 July
2012.
Harris, Dianne, Ed. Second Suburb: Levittown, Pennsylvania. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2010. Print.
Hansen, Liane. "Levittown: A Racial Battleground In The Suburbs." Weekend Edition Sunday. National Public Radio, 9
Mar. 2009. Web. 17 July 2012.
Page 2 of 55
Fair Use
We take as a given the
important role played
by the doctrine of Fair
Use, especially as
copyright law (can)
encourage creativity
and especially as this
particular treatment
and the application of
the Remixing Rural
Texas (RRT) prototype
to it further establishes
it as appropriately
“Fair Use” in
compliance with all
four factors of section
107 of the Copyright
Law.
Where possible, we
draw from materials in
the Public Doman or
holding Creative
Commons licensing
options that allow the
uses we require.
Where possible,
materials we have
created for this remix
hold the CC licensing
option AttributionShareAlike. Please
see “Permissions” for
an extended
discussion of these
issues and links to
relevant source
materials.
2.
22.0127.28
sec 22 –
27
Crisis in Levittown.
Crisis in Levittown. (8:21(8:21-8:26). Prod. Lee 8:26). Prod. Lee Bobker and
Bobker and Lester
Lester Becker. 1957.
Becker. 1957.
Dynamic Films. Academic
Dynamic Films.
Film Archive of North
Academic Film Archive America. Archive.org. Web.
of North America.
Apr. 2012.
Archive.org. Web. Apr.
2012.
Music: “Memorial
Park” (continued)
Levittown, 1957
PA
The individual on screen now is one of several mothers interviewed who moved to Levvitown precisely because, as
she explains, “we understood that [the community] was going to be all white and we were very happy to buy a home
here.”
“The whole thing,” she insists in this excerpt, “centers around the word ‘integration.” We begin here because for our
central arguments the “whole thing,” likewise, “centers around integration,” albeit for very different reasons. Rather
than begin this first clip from Crisis with the original audio in which the interviewer asks her if she thought that “having
a Negro family living here will affect the community as a whole,” we chose to strip the audio from the first few seconds
of her appearance on screen. In doing so, we allow the audience to experience her discomfort as she shifts awkwardly
(and silently) from side to side while firmly gripping the back of her lawn chair as her children play in the background.
Her discomfort seems a useful illustration of the discomfort felt among many white Americans as the civil rights
movement began forcing an end to the racist power structures dominating American history well into the 20th century
and, according to many, far beyond.
Fear
Her greatest fear, one echoed by many of the Levittown residents included in the documentary, is that “in the end,” as
a result of “this integration business,” “we probably will end up with mixing socially and you will have, well, I think their
aim is mixed marriages and becoming equal with the whites.” “Mixed marriages” were not, of course, “’their’ aim,” as
the filmmakers point out. Though a top fear of most of the white segregationists interviewed, “mixed marriages” didn’t
even make the list in study after study of African Americans and their key desires. At the top of every list among
African Americans was, of course, equal access to all the rights and privileges afforded all American citizens. We refer
to this as a both a point of departure and another illustration of the many challenges to effective communication about
race in America.
Invisibility
“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me. . . . When they approach me they
see only my surroundings, themselves or figments of their imagination, indeed, everything and anything
except me.” –Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man (1952)
What this interviewee says next echoes a theme we have found, time and again throughout our research concerning
rhetorical constructions of race in this rural university town during the decade immediately following desegregation:
“the only way they are going to do that [“become equal with whites”] is by education and by bettering themselves, not
by pushing the way they have here” (emphasis added). We will return to this point several times throughout this
project, both in the current remix and “Still Searching,” the remix foregrounding critical race narratives emerging from
the archives.
Housing
The violent countermovement among whites in Levvittown determined to maintain separation of the races was only
one of many such responses erupting in all-white suburbs across the nation. However, this documentary and others
helped capture local tensions that offer a useful illustration of the “rhetorical constructions of race” likewise dominating
communication about race and racism in Commerce, Texas, in the 1950s and 1960s.
The first African Americans to move into the white sections of this rural university town, for example, were the African
American professors (Dr. Talbot, 1968; Dr. Brewer, 1969) and administrators (Dr. Moore, 1972) whose presence in the
community was the result of student activism, as we will illustrate. Unlike Levvittown and other all-white
neighborhoods, no evidence suggests their moves to homes outside the historically segregated neighborhood in
Commerce were met with local resistance. However, it is also important to note that these moves into Commerce’s
predominantly white neighborhoods came more than a decade after such violent responses began dominating local
news.
Our story is not about housing, though we hope to encourage other research and creative projects that delve into
these very themes. One related local story that came up several times throughout our research and public
programming is, like so many good stories, both amusing and informative.
In 1968, Dr. David Talbot and his family became the first non-white residents to join the university faculty and the first
African American to move into the middle-class neighborhood where the vast majority of the university faculty lived.
Over the next few decades, he regularly shared this story of an early encounter with one of his neighbors:
Page 3 of 55
Fair Use
Please see
“Permissions” for an
extended discussion of
these issues and links
to relevant source
materials.
3.
While tending to his lawn, he saw an older white woman driving slowly in front of his house. A friendly guy in a
relatively friendly town, he naturally waved and went to her when she waved him over. “How much does the misses
charge you to take care of her lawn?” she asked, clearly under the impression that “the misses” was someone other
than Dr. Talbot’s wife. Without missing a beat, Dr. Talbot told his new neighbor, “Well, the misses don’t pay me much
at all, but she does let me sleep with her from time to time.”
The story has been told and retold quite often over the decades, always to the great pleasure of the storyteller and
listeners alike.
Bibliography
Ellison, Ralph. The Invisible Man. NY: Random House, 1952.
Kushner, David. Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb.
Walker & Company, 2009. Print.
“Post World War II Suburbs in Pennsylvania” (1945-1965). Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.
Pennsylvania, PA. Web.
sec 27.5 –
36
begin: 28,
East Texas State
University began
the process of
desegregation in
1964.
27.29-36.24
sec 27.5 – 36
Music: “Memorial
Park” (continued)
30:05-36.02
sec 29 – 36
Narration: Shannon
Carter (original), 2012
Hendricks, Lavelle. “Coming Together: A Conversation with Norris Community Residents and Other Experts.” Harry
Turner, Ivory Moore, Maydell Pannell, and Lavelle Hendricks, with Shannon Carter. Converging Literacies Center
(CLiC). Texas A&M-Commerce. Northeast Texas Digital Collections. October 2009. Web.
27.29-36.24
sec 27.5 – 36
27.29-36.24
27.2927.29sec 27.5 – 36
36.24
36.24
Aerial View of
sec 27.5 – sec 27.5
East Texas State 36
– 36
An estimated six black Americans enrolled for summer courses in 1964. For at least the previous ten years, African
Teachers College. Commerc
Americans throughout the area had attempted to enter the college, but President James G. Gee routinely denied them
1950.
e, TX
1964
admittance (Wilkison; Shabazz). Described as an ardent segregationist, the former Army officer could, however, take
Photograph.
orders, regardless of his personal feelings (Reynolds and Conrad; Wilkison). By the early 1960s, it was evident that
Historic ET
African Americans would enter the college sooner rather than later, so in 1962, he appointed an ad hoc committee to
Collection.
study desegregation at the college level to recommend the best policies and procedures to help the school whenever
Northeast Texas
they had to finally eliminate their racial rules. After studying Lamar, Arlington, and North Texas, the committee
Digital
recommended two things: first, that Gee call together all the faculty and staff of the college to inform them of the
Collections.
change and secure their cooperation, and second, that the college’s news director contact media to garner support in
Texas A&M
bringing about a “dignified integration.” Gee followed the recommendations to the letter, delivering a speech that called
Universityfor an “orderly” integration and following up with a carefully crafted PR campaign designed to discourage press
Commerce. Web.
coverage of any kind. By all accounts, the rhetorical event met every one of their desired outcomes (Wilkison; Carter;
Sept. 2011.
Carter and Conrad).
Bibliography
Carter, Shannon and James H. Conrad. “In Possession of Community.” CCC (September 2012), forthcoming. Print.
---. Carter, Shannon. “A Clear Channel: Circulating Resistance in a Rural University Town.” CLJ (September 2012),
forthcoming. Print.
Gee, James G. University President Papers, collection 2008.28, James G. Gee Library Special Collections, Texas A &
M University-Commerce.
Reyonds, Donald E. and James H. Conrad. Professor Mayo’s College: A History of East Texas State University. East
Texas State UP, 1993. Print.
Shabazz, Amilcar. Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher
Education in Texas. University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Print.
Wilkison, Debra. “Eyewitness to Social Change: The Desegregation of East Texas State College.” M.A. thesis, East
Texas State University, 1990. Print.
Page 4 of 55
Fair Use
sec 27.5 – 36
Please see
“Permissions” for an
extended discussion of
these issues and links
to relevant source
materials.
4.
39.14-1:01:10
39.14-1:01:10
37 – 60
37 – 60
That summer then
university
president and
outspoken
Music: “Memorial
segregationist
Park” (continued)
James G. Gee
called together all Narration: Carter
faculty and staff to (continued)
announce ET’s
immediate
compliance with
civil rights
legislation
mandating
desegregation
everywhere,
including at the
last two public
colleges in Texas
still upholding
racial barriers.”
This is a story
about
36.25-45.06
36.2560.6
37 – 60
36.25- 39.14-60.6
60.6
37 – 44 (7 sec)
37 – 60 37-56
39.14-1:01:10
37 – 60
37 – 44 (7 sec)
Gee Portrait.
c1950.
Commerc 1889Carter, Shannon and
Photograph.
e, Texas 1964
The current study of how communication happened (and didn’t) after the process of desegregation finally began in this Jim Conrad. “In
Historic ET
rural university town depends, in part, on a deep attention to what rhetoric and composition scholars have called
Possession of
Collection.
ETSU “mundane texts,” “the “multiple, mundane documents, interpersonal networks, historical influences, and rhetorical
Community: Toward a
Northeast Texas
was
moves and countermoves” that likewise surround and enable all rhetorical action (Rivers and Webber).
More Sustainable
Digital
originally
Local.” CCC
Collections.
establish From Carter, “A Clear Channel”:
(September 2012),
Texas A&M
ed in
Segregation was, of course, a deeply divisive issue in Commerce, just as it was everywhere else. However, the events forthcoming. 7.
University1889 to that most characterize local struggles here and, indeed, throughout much of the rest of the southern states, were
Commerce. Web.
serve fought not in the streets among local publics but in mundane documents ranging from interoffice memoranda among
Sept. 2011.
America’ campus administrators, letters exchanged between campus leaders and area, state, and federal officials, legal
s
documents, and petitions (Shabazz; Sokel; Dittmer).
45.07-52.09
[As noted earlier,] the primary and stated goal for our campus was what Gee …called “a dignified integration,” arguing
45 – 51 (6 sec)
demonstrations against desegregation would threaten the local community’s sustainability far more then any new
admission policy ever could (Carter and Conrad; Wilkinson; Shabazz).
Gee with Map of
Texas. c1950.
A particularly useful example of this can be found in in the circulation of documents surrounding two local
Photograph.
segregationists and bitter enemies: US Senator Sam Rayburn, this university’s most famous alumnus, and James G.
Historic ET
Gee, ETSU president from 1947-1966. From 1913 until 1961, Sam Rayburn represented this rural district dominated
Collection.
by voters loyal to Jim Crow and remained himself equally loyal to his constituents and, especially, ETSU, the institution
Northeast Texas
that had given this poor farmer without a high school diploma a chance at a college education. Despite his stance on
Digital
the issue (which some argue had softened considerably after decades in Washington DC) and the likely threat to his
Collections.
voting base it posed, he was an even more loyal Democrat and, as Speaker of the House, helped sign into law the
Texas A&M
most significant civil rights legislation since Reconstruction: the Civil Rights Act of 1954. His public connections to
UniversityLyndon B. Johnson, combined with this piece of legislation, made him a bitter enemy to a number of powerful local
Commerce. Web.
leaders. (CLJ, forthcoming)
Sept. 2011.
We begin the current remix with a brief reference to the “mundane texts” surrounding Gee’s speech announcing
52.10-60.6
desegregation in 1964. In the next section, we draw the viewer’s attention to similarly mundane texts surrounding
52 – 60 (8 sec)
campus unrest in 1968, including a list of demands put forward by students at Columbia (echoed on our campus in
1968 by the “Declaration of Rights” issued by the Afro-American Student Society of East Texas) and the demands
“Last State
articulated by the Olympic Boycott for Human Rights (OPHR). Following this, we turn to the mundane texts that drew
College Drops
sprinter John Carlos to OPHR the year before he would join Tommie Smith on the Olympic medal stand in Mexico City
Racial Barriers”
(1968) and raise a gloved fist in silent protest against ongoing racism and related injustices.
Dallas News 6
June 1964. Print.
In the last section of Part I, we draw attention to the “Declaration of Rights” referenced earlier and related local texts
created and circulated among local activists on behalf of the Afro-American Student Society of East Texas (ASSET).
Part II of “A Clear Channel” will call attention to the charter and related local texts that established the Norris
Community Club (NCC) in 1973, a university-community group that was able to garner significant rhetorical agency on
behalf of Norris, the historically segregated neighborhood in town.
Bibliography
Afro-American Student Society of East Texas (ASSET), “Declaration of Rights.” Halliday, University President Papers,
collection (“Afro-American Affairs”). James G. Gee Library Special Collections. Texas A&M-Commerce.
Carlos, John and David Zirin. The John Carlos Story: The Sports Moment that Changed the World. Haymarket Press,
2011.
Carter, Shannon. “A Clear Channel: Circulating Resistance in a Rural University Town.” CLJ (September 2012),
forthcoming. Print.
Page 5 of 55
36.25-1:01:10
37 – 60
Fair Use
Please see
“Permissions” for an
extended discussion of
these issues and links
to relevant source
materials.
5.
Rivers, Nathaniel A. and Ryan P. Weber. “Ecological, Pedagogical, Public Rhetoric.” CCC 63.2 (December 2011):
187-218. Print.
A Clear Channel
what happened
next.
60.7-63.6
60 – 67 =
YouTube 1.00-1.07
Narration:
Carter (continued)
Music:
“Memorial Park”
(continued)
60.7-63.6
60 – 67 =
YouTube 1.00-1.07
Explain how “A Clear channel” came about (the title)—NCC on “a clear channel”
1:01:11-1:06
60 – 67 =
YouTube 1.00-1.07
From Carter, “A Clear Channel” (2012):
By all accounts desegregation at ETSU occurred largely without incident. In this sense, perhaps it was, indeed, a
“dignified integration,” a characterization that remains a significant point of pride for local citizens. (forthcoming).
Fair Use
Equally significant, perhaps, is the role played by the pervasive rhetoric of a “dignified integration” in effectively
shutting down viable channels for communication about race and racism. In their 1969 article “The Rhetoric of
Confrontation,” rhetoricians Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith challenged the widespread dismissal of radical
demonstrations as “uncivil” or “unreasonable.” According to Scott and Smith, “[a] rhetorical theory suitable to our age
must take into account the charge that civility and decorum serve as masks for the preservation of injustice, that they
condemn the dispossessed to non-being, and that as transmitted in a technological society, they become the
instrumentalities of power for those who ‘have’” (8). That fact is no less true in the 1960s than it is today in this age of
the Occupy Movement, the Arab Spring, and similar efforts. As rhetorician Nancy Welch argues in her 2012 defense of
what she calls “uncivil rhetoric,” “civility functions to hold in check agitation against a social order that is undemocratic
in access to decision making power and unequal in distribution of wealth” (forthcoming).
6.
Please see
“Permissions” for an
extended discussion of
these issues and links
to relevant source
materials.
We shall return to this theme at several points in this remix and its scholarly annotations.
Bibliography
Carter, Shannon. “A Clear Channel: Circulating Resistance in a Rural University Town.” Special Issue on “Writing
Democracy.” Shannon Carter and Deborah Mutnick, Guest Editors. CLJ (September 2012), forthcoming. Print.
Scott, Robert L. and Donald K. Smith. “The Rhetoric of Confrontation.” Quarterly Journal of Speech. 55 (1969): 8.
68 - 71
YouTube
1:08- 1:10
(2 sec)
start 64.2
end 66
(1:07-1:10)
If, as Martin
Luther King
argued in 1958,
64.2-66
Music: Casel, Brian.
“Piano Stripped.”
Freeplaymusic.com,
BMI. Web. June 2012.
Narration: Carter
(continued)
Welch, Nancy. “Informed, Passionate, and Disorderly: Uncivil Rhetoric in a New Gilded Age.” Special Issue on “Writing
Democracy.” Shannon Carter and Deborah Mutnick, Guest Editors. CLJ (September 2012), forthcoming. Print.
64.2-66
start 64.2 start
64.2-66
start 64.2
end 66 64.2
start 64.2
end 66
end 66 end 66
1:07-1:10)
(1:07-1:10)
Washingto 1:07- (1:07-1:10)
n DC
1:10) In an attempt to understand local attempts to communicate about race and racism in the decade surrounding
Image:
68 - 71 1954, desegregation, we will deconstruct popular narratives about the civil rights movement that simplify Martin Luther King’s
Associated Press YouTube 1958, core philosophy as concerned only with overturning segregation. As noted earlier, King saw this as but one step in the
Martin Luther
1:08- 1:10 1968
“civil rights revolution” (King, Where Do We Go From Here?). A great many steps remain.
King, “I Have a (2 sec) 68 - 71
Dream.”
YouTub If desegregation were King’s only goal, then we might find the reality of the civil rights movement to be easily
Washington DC,
e 1:08- reconciled with the rhetoric of a “dignified,” “orderly” integration that was ETSU’s primary goal. Indeed, as Gee
August 1963.
1:10
explained in his speech announcing ETSU’s compliance with civil rights legislation:
(2 sec)
Page 6 of 55
1:07-1:11:
66
start 64.2
end 66
(1:07-1:10)
Fair Use
Please see
“Permissions” for an
extended discussion of
these issues and links
7.
Our attitudes, our personal conduct, and the manner in which we exercise the utmost of practical and
active good citizenship and self-control will be forever recorded in the annals of this institution, this county,
and the State of Texas as being irreparably bad or infinitely good. . . . It is my devout wish and fervent
prayer that the integration of this college will come about in an orderly manner. (Gee)
to relevant source
materials.
A rhetoric of a “dignified integration” would guide the vast majority of area conversations about race in that decade
surrounding desegregation. Yet such rhetoric complicates meaningful communication about race, as we’ve already
pointed out and will explore in greater depth throughout the current remix. Such rhetoric contributes directly to the
“colorblind racism” referenced earlier. It also reinforces misreading’s of both the civil rights movement itself and the
black resistance that came later, especially as represented in the simplified versions of Malcolm X’s philosophy that
dominates our collective memory about the long civil rights movement.
Bibliography
Clayton Powell, Jr., Adam. “My Grandfather was a Slave.” The New Masses. 15 Jan. 1946. Web. 17 July 2012.
Gee, James G. University President Papers, collection 2008.28, James G. Gee Library Special Collections, Texas A &
M University-Commerce.
71.4-71.9 Segregation
YouTube
1:11
segregation led to 66.5-67.5
Start: 66.5
End: 67.2
Start: 66.5
End: 67.2
Narration: Carter
(continued)
Music: Casel
(continued)
72-72.6 Hate
YouTube
1:12
Start 67.4end: 67.8
hate based on
67.6-68.3
Narration: Carter
(continued)
Music:
Casel (continued)
USA
1875
71.4-71.9 71.471.9
YouTube
1:11
YouTub
e 1:11
Start: 66.5
End: 67.2 Start:
66.5
End:
67.2
Dallas,
Texas
1902
72-72.6
YouTub
Start 67.4- e 1:12
end: 67.8
Start
67.4end:
67.8
King, Martin Luther. Where Do We Go From Here?: Chaos or Community. Beacon Press, 1968. Print.
66.5-67.5
Start: 66.5
End: 67.2
1:11:17-1:12:16
Start: 66.5
End: 67.2
8.
Fair Use
When Americans recount the battle against racial discrimination, they almost exclusively recall the Civil Rights
Movement against de jure segregation, meaning racial segregation enshrined and buttressed in statutes. This de jure
segregation was a hallmark of the former Confederacy, and the modern Movement is almost characterized as
occurring in the South. However, de facto segregation, racial segregation enshrined and buttressed in societal
relationships, was – and some would argue, remains – an issue in the North and the West. For this reason and many
others, the current remix attempts to deconstruct the artificial line separating the civil rights movement in both time (as
ending with the assignation of MLK) and space (as primarily a “southern” issue).
67.6-68.3
Start 67.4-end: 67.8
In this area of Texas at least, local rhetoric surrounding the process of desegregation was regularly described in terms
of “dignity”-- in direct and conscious opposition to the race riots occurring elsewhere across the south and filling the
living rooms of White America. Local citizens often describe their approach to desegregation as far removed from
televised versions of hate and fear dominating southern responses to the civil rights movement, at least according to
national news and collective memory. As historian Michael Phillips argues in his provocative Dallas history White
Metropolis, “Texas had no cartoon villains” in the civil rights struggles like Bull Connors. Of course this did not mean
Texas avoided racism altogether. Far from it.
This rhetoric of a “dignified” integration was advanced elsewhere across the region, in part, by the quick work of area
business leaders. In Dallas, for example, an hour west of Commerce, Texas, business leaders formed the Dallas
Citizen’s Council to develop, among other things, an informational film designed to help avoid the violent opposition to
desegregation seen elsewhere across the south. This film, entitled Dallas at the Crossroads (1961) sidesteps almost
entirely the fundamental issues driving the civil rights movement. Adopting a tone devoid of any ethical dimensions,
the filmmakers focus instead of the loss of industry, growth, and profits that could result from white resistance like that
taking place in many other southern cities. It is about capitalism not morality, the Dallas Citizen’s Council seemed to
Page 7 of 55
Please see
“Permissions” for an
extended discussion of
these issues and links
to relevant source
materials.
9.
suggest. (Future remixes linked to Remixing Rural Texas take as a starting point Dallas at the Crossroads, borrowing
directly from the key themes referenced in the current remix and related work.)
Throughout Dallas at the Crossroads, filmmakers offer a range of arguments for abiding by federal regulations
concerning civil rights without resistance--not because it is the ethical thing do to but because it is the law and
resistance is bad for business (local business leaders explained that new businesses will not want to establish
themselves in places known for civil unrest), bad for the children (a child psychologist explains how the fear children
experienced as a result of violent opposition among white segregationists in places like Little Rock and Selma affected
the children in significant ways), and bad for the city’s very future. Lawyers explained that the courtrooms were the
place for challenges to desegregation, not the streets. A judge and the Dallas police chief promised that violators
would be prosecuted. In short, the film implied the future of Dallas depended on citizens who approached the issue of
desegregation with characteristic dignity and grace—working within established systems designed to maintain law and
order.
The film contains no moral arguments for desegregation, just the practical responses to the new laws resulting from
the civil rights legislation. The audience for whom this film was screened throughout 1961 were always white (see
Collier and Caudill; Albert et al.; Dallas Chamber of Commerce; Webster and Russell). The whitewashing of race in
this region effectively undermined widespread resistance building across the region, as we will explain.
Bibliography
Dallas at the Crossroads. 1961. Dallas Citizens Council. Texas Moving Image Archive Program Collection. Texas Film
Commission. Web.
Dallas Chamber of Commerce. Keep It Together Dallas (1975-1977).
The Selling of the Plan. 1976. Dir. Christi Collier, with Reporter Susan Kent Caudill. KERA-TV. VHS, Beta. OCLC
41305749.
Phillips, Michael. White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001. U of Texas P, 2006. Print.
Webster, William J. and Russell A Chadbourn. Desegregation: The Dallas Experience. Dallas Independent School
District, Texas. Office of Statistics and Ad Hoc Research, 1981. ED213776.
73 -74
Fear
YouTube
1:13 –
1:14
fear resulting
World
73 -74
YouTube
1:13 –
1:14
68.1-68.5
75-76
Unknown
YouTube
1:15 –
1:16
10.
68.1-68.5
From the
unknown
68.3-69.3
68.8-69.6
Narration: Carter
(continued)
Music:
Casel (continued)
1.14-1.15
68.8-69.6 68.8Commerc 69.6
e, Texas 18891964
68.3-69.3
11.
68.8-69.6
Similarly, as we’ve explained, a rhetoric of a “dignified integration” guided both the committee ET president Gee
appointed to study desegregation at other public institutions and the choices Gee made based on the committee’s
recommendations.
68.8-69.6
Lack of
77-79
communication
YouTube
1:17– 1:19
perpetuated by
the lack of
communication
69.5-72.5
70.2-71
Narration: Carter
(continued)
USA
World
77-79
YouTube
1:17–
77-79 69.5-72.5
YouTub 77-79
e 1:17– YouTube 1:17– 1:19
1:19
70.2-71
Page 8 of 55
12.
1:19
Music:
Casel (continued)
1.16
70.2-71
70.2-71
Throughout, we are primarily concerned with communication and attempts to establish, as the title implies, “a clear
channel” for communication across difference about race and racism in local contexts like ours.
70.2-71
80 - 82
separation
YouTube
1:20 –
1:22
1.19-1.21
forced by our
physical and legal
separation,
USA
80 - 82
YouTube
1:20 –
1:22
71.4-72.6
13.
71.4-72.6
83-87
YouTube
1:23-1:27
how did
72.6-76.6
communication
change after
1:22-1:27
desegregation
reached this rural 73.2-76.2
university town?
Narration: Carter
(continued)
1:22-1:27
73.2-76.2
Music:
Casel (continued)
73.2-74.4
1:22-1:27
72.6-76.6 72.676.6
1:22-1:27
1:2273.2-76.2 1:27
73.2-76.2
Commerce
Square, March Commerc 73.21962.
e, Texas 76.2
Photograph.
Commerce
1889Journal
1964
Photograph
Collection.
Northeast Texas
Digital
Collections.
Texas A&M
UniversityCommerce. Web.
July 2012.
72.6-76.6
1:22-1:27
73.2-76.2
The question driving “A Clear Channel,” both the current remix and Carter’s more traditional, print-based scholarship
for which the remix serves as companion, is “How did communication change after desegregation researched this rural
university town?” It is, we hope, evident that the answers we offer are provisional and no less fragmented and
incomplete than the critical race narratives they attempt to unpack.
1:22:05-1:24:25
Fair Use
14.
1:24:26-1:27:20
Fair Use
74.5-76.2
Commerce
Square, March
1962.
Photograph.
Commerce
Journal
Photograph
Collection.
Northeast Texas
Digital
Collections.
Texas A&M
UniversityCommerce. Web.
July 2012.
(1953)
76.3-80.4
76.6-80.4
88-94
88-94
YouTube 1:28-1:34 (6 YouTube 1:28-1:34 (6 sec)
USA
1953
76.6-80.4
88-94 88-94 (6 sec)
end: 1:33 YouTub
Page 9 of 55
1:28:05-1:34:06
88-94
YouTube 1:28-1:34
15.
sec)
end: 1:33
e 1:28- end: 1:33
1:34 (6
76.8-79.8 sec)
end: 1:33
76.8-79.8
76.8-79.8
76.8-79.8
end: 1:33
76.8-79.8
A Communications
A Communications Primer
Primer (0:00-0:07).
(0:00-0:07).
Charles Eames. 1953. Charles Eames. 1953. IBM.
IBM. Prelinger
Prelinger Archives. Web.
Archives. Web. June. June. 2012.
2012.
YouTube 1:28-1:34
end:
1:33
76.879.8
Public Domain
The instructional film A Communications Primer (1953) serves as a touchstone text for the current remix. At its most
basic level, A Communications Primer links the current study of communication about race and racism in a particular
time (primarily 1967-1968 in Part I and 1973 in Part II) and place (ETSU and the surrounding community) with relevant
conversations within the discipline of rhetoric and composition.
Yet it also offers a useful link to the discipline’s very origins. The Conference on College Composition and
Communication (CCCC), the largest organization dedicated to writing research, theory, and teaching, was established
in 1949, just a few years before A Communications Primer was produced and the very year Clyde Shannon and
Warren Weaver published A Mathematical Theory of Communication, the volume upon which A Communications
Primer was loosely based. By that point, communications studies was developing into an increasingly robust discipline,
especially as innovations in mass communications systems like radio and television complicated previous assumptions
about how speakers/writers might best communicate intended messages. No longer could we assume any clear
distinction between a message’s content and the technology serving as its delivery system. Indeed, as Marshall
McLuhan would later insist, “The Medium is the Message” (1967). This argument appears as early as 1951, however,
in McLuhan’s The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (Vanguard Press). In his analysis of a 1948 print ad for
RCA depicting a rural family going about their everyday life with the radio on, McLuhen challenges the RCA campaign
“Freedom to Listen—Freedom to Look.” “We still have our freedom to listen?,” he asks rhetorically. “Come on kiddos.
Buy a radio and feel free—to listen” (21). Clearly the technology drives the message. We have no choice but to listen.
By the time A Communications Primer appeared, our young discipline of rhetoric and composition was already
struggling with and against what we would call today a “media saturated environment. In 1949, for example, the NCTE
Committee on Reading at the Secondary Schools and College Levels issued a report on “Reading in an Age of Mass
Communication” that attempted to discern how best to help students sort through the unprecedented levels of
information presented on a day-to-day basis. Similar questions dominated the first few annual meetings of the newly
formed CCCC throughout.
Given the directions the civil rights movement took in the media throughout the 1950s and, especially, the 1960s, such
a question seems especially appropriate for our exploration of race and racism in this local context at this particular
time. How do we help students sort through all the information they are presented about race and racism in America?
How does one make ethical, meaningful decisions in such a context?
Bibliography
Brooks, Ron. “The Mechanical Bride of Pinbot: Redressing the Early McLuhan.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric,
Writing, and Culture. Special Issue, “McLuhan at 100.” Kevin Brooks and David Beard, Guest Editors. 12 (2011). Web.
Library of Congress and Vitra Design Museum. The Work of Charles and Ray Eames: A Legacy of Invention. May 22,
2012. Web.
McLuhan, Marshall and Quentin Fiore. The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects. 1967. Corte Madera, CA.
Gingko Press, 2001. Print.
National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE). “Reading in an Age of Mass Communication.” Committee on Reading
at the Secondary Schools and College Levels, 1949.
Page 10 of 55
80.6-85.2
95-101=YouTube
1:35-1:41 (6 sec)\
80.6-85.2
USA
95-101=YouTube
1:35-1:41 (6 sec
end: 1:37
81-84.6
A Communications
Primer (0:57).
Charles Eames. 1953.
IBM. Prelinger
Archives. Archive.org.
Web. June. 2012.
81-82.2
Shannon, C.E. “A
Mathematical
Theory of
Communication.”
The Bell System
Technical Journal.
27 (July, October
1948): 379-423;
623-656. Web.
1948
80.6-85.2
9595-101=YouTube 1:35-1:41 (6sec)
101=You
Tube end: 1:37
1:351:41 (6 81-82.2
sec)
Claude Shannon’s paper “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” (shown here) appearing in 1948 was published
end:
in book form the following year as The Mathematical Theory of Communication (with Warren Weaver in 1949). “It is a
1:37
revolutionary work,” notes University of Illinois Press in their catalog entry for the commemorative edition of The
Mathematical Theory of Communication in 1998. “Few books have had as lasting an impact or played as important a
81-82.2 role in our modern world” as this one. Published first in book form in 1949, “it has since gone through four hardcover
and sixteen paperback printings.” Indeed, it is difficult to overstate Shannon’s influence on the digital age, a fact that
has been of considerable interest to scholars in everything from information studies and computational linguists to
media studies and the digital humanities.
Shannon was a mathematician and electrical engineer not a humanities scholar, thus his concerns were not
immediately those driving our current remix. Unlike Marshall McLuhan and many other dominant media scholars of the
time, Shannon sought to separate the medium from the message in order to develop mechanisms that more reliably
transmitted vast amounts of information to their destinations.
Widely regarded as the founder of information theory, Claude Shannon’s seminal paper “A Mathematical Theory of
Communication,” appearing first in The Bell System Technical Journal in 1948 focuses on the processing and
communication of information across what he calls communications “channels.” We draw attention to the mathematical
formula the Shannon created, which is communicated in his schematic representation that serves as the film’s basis.
With it, Shannon helped solve a problem that had long plagued engineers in the communication’s industry—namely, a
model that could help express the common elements of communication in ways at once simple and flexible enough to
enable engineers, scientists, and theorists to solve the ongoing problem of “noise.”
The information content of a message transmitted, Shannon argues, has far more to do with the number of 1’s and 0’s
it takes to transmit it than with the content of the message. All information is reduced to a series of yes/no choices—
the circuit is either on (“1”), or the circuit is off (“2”). Each yes/no decision offered what he called one “bit” of
information, perhaps the earliest use of this term we now understand to be fundamental to the transfer of digital
information today. Indeed, it is difficult to overstate Shannon’s contributions to the digital age. Essentially, “Shannon’s
equations told engineers how much information could be transmitted over the channels of an ideal system” (Alcatel 2).
Our ability to transform information—phone calls, documents, music, video, virtually everything—into digital bits of data
efficiently compressed to be transmitted quickly and reliably to a receiver is founded on Shannon’s innovative work
with both MIT and Bell Labs.
Bibliography
Alcatel Lucent Technology. “Bell Labs Celebrates 50 Years of Information Theory.” Web.
Gallager, R.G. “Claude E. Shannon: A Retrospective on His Life, Work, and Impact.” IEEE Transactions on
Information Theory 47.7 (Nov. 2001): 2681-2695. Print.
Guizzo, Erico Marui. “The Essential Message: Claude Shannon and the Making of Information Theory.” M.S. thesis.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. Web.
Shannon, Claude E. and Warren Weaver. The Mathematical Theory of Communication. 1949. University of Illinois P,
1998. Print.
Verdu, Sergio. “Fifty Years of Shannon Theory.” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. 44.6 (October 1998): 20572077. Web.
.
Page 11 of 55
1:34-1:42:09
95-101=YouTube
1:35-1:41
end: 1:37
81-82.2
16.
80.6-85.2
80.6-85.2
95-101=YouTube
1:35-1:41 (6 sec)
95-101=YouTube
1:35-1:41 (6 sec)
begin: 1:38
end: 1:41
A Communications
Primer.
Charles Eames. 1953.
IBM. Prelinger
Archives. Archive.org.
Web. June. 2012.
begin: 82.8
end: 84.4
Shannon, C.E. “A
Mathematical
Theory of
Communication.”
The Bell System
Technical Journal.
27 (July, October
1948): 379-423;
623-656. Web.
USA
1953
80.6-85.2
1:34-1:42:09
95-101=YouTube 1:35-1:41 (6 sec)
begin: 1:38
end: 1:41
begin: 1:38
end: 1:41
begin: 82.8
end: 84.4
Though Shannon’s most immediate concerns were the technical aspects of communication rather than the human or
semiotic elements, his schemata helped explain both. As Jan Hajic explains in his contribution to A Companion to the
Digital Humanities (2004), Shannon
was interested not only in the mathematical aspects of technical communication (such as signal transfer
over telegraph wires), but he and Warren Weaver also tried to generalize this approach to human
language communication. Although forgotten by many, this work was the first attempt to describe the use
of natural language by strictly formal (mathematical and statistical, or stochastic) methods.
Hajic argues that Shannon’s work is of fundamental importance to linguists. Shannon’s work has been described as
equally significant to the digital humanities. Indeed Matthew G. Kirschenbaum (University of Maryland) lists Shannon’s
1948 article as on of 18 “absolutely foundational” articles or chapters for “an introduction to the digital humanities.
In rhetoric and composition studies, Shannon’s work is similarly important, though largely forgotten. Of course
Shannon-Weaver’s model of communication is far too linear to find acceptance among rhetoricians today, and with
good reason (see Porter 2010, Porter 2009). Also of note and likewise articulating the urgency with which we return to
this influential study is Elizabeth Losh’s assertion that “World War II and the massive investment of government
resources in computer science created a scientific discipline in which ‘information’ was the chief object of study. In light
of this analysis of political reaction,” Losh names Shannon’s “A Mathematical Theory of Communication” as one of
“three major texts” that “merit new rhetorical scrutiny.” Not only is the linear model represented inaccurate but it is also
highly problematic from a cultural-historical standpoint, drawing attention to the “effect of the marketplace on
communication once information can be quantified and thus commodified.” In their examples, Losh suggests, these
texts also “express a certain level of discomfort in the new science’s inappropriately gendered association with a then
largely pink-collar communications industry.” In their examples and rhetoric, they, in effect, “redraw the boundaries of
the human subject and the national citizen and direct attention to how political messages contain redundancy and
noise.”
We do not take A Communication Primer as a starting point to suggest such problematic representations don’t matter.
We take this film as a starting point precisely because they matter—at the time of the film’s publication and core
circulation and today, as we explore our potential responses to the ongoing concerns of racism and related issues.
Indeed, regardless of the current status of the Shannon-Weaver communications model among rhetoric and
composition scholars, it is important for us to point out the impact the model had on the earliest iterations of our
growing discipline. Soon after its publication, A Communications Primer, based loosely on Shannon’s theory, found its
way into communications and composition courses in newly formed general education programs across the nation.
According to a 1956 report (CCC), the film was introduced to an audience of more than 95 participants at the 1955
CCCC in Chicago. Louis Forsdale, the session moderator, began with a brief description of Shannon and Weaver’s A
Mathematical Theory of Communication (1949). Whereas Shannon, Forsdale notes, approached the communications
process “from a purely engineering point of view,” Weaver suggested “the same kind of model . . . could be applied in
the humanities” (165). A “spirited discussion” followed the viewing of this film that extended Shannon’s model into the
humanities still further, featuring “William D. Boutwell of Scholastic Magazines and David Hume of St. David’s School.”
Hume described the ways he integrates the film into his first-year courses. Both Boutwell and Hume “admired the film”
but suggest the concepts are difficult for viewers at most any level. They are also vital, Boutwell suggests. “We have
asked ‘What books should be read?” but have not spent as much time inquiring ‘What is communication?’ . . . as we
continue to develop more leisure time and shorten our working hours, we are going to be confronted with the fact that
the great force of commercial communication has our minds much of the day,” Boutwell points out. We hear in
Boutwell’s comments echoes of McLuhen’s The Mechanical Bride (1951), cited in an earlier annotation. In response to
a 1948 RCA ad campaign featuring a radio listening integrated into rural family life the way we have long understood
Page 12 of 55
begin: 82.8
end: 84.4
17.
television to be integrated into American family time, the tagline reads, “Freedom to Look-Freedom to Listen.” To this,
McLuhan responds, “We still have our freedom to listen? . . . Come on kiddos. Buy a radio and feel free—to listen”
(21).
Though few humanities scholars have taken up his contributions directly, indirect influence of his framework are clear.
We offer as evidence the 1955 CCCC session on “The Communication Process: Conceptual Models for Research and
Teaching,” the details of which appear in the 1956 issue of CCC: “It was the consensus of the panel that although the
movie Communications Primer might have its inadequacies, no better film is available and its advantages far outweigh
its disadvantages” (165).
Likewise, for our purposes today, in 2012, A Communications Primer “might have its inadequacies,” but “no better film
is available and its advantages far outweigh its disadvantages.” Indeed, given the date of this film, its influence on
conversations at this meeting, coupled with the influence Shannon’s theory has had on information theory and, by
extension and implication, digital media and, indeed, the digital humanities, a better option seems unlikely.
Thus, A Communication Primer serves as a point of departure on the key research dominating the scholarly
conversations at the time in the discipline framing the current discussion to which the current remix is designed to
contribute.
Bibliography
Hajic, Jan. “Linguistics Meets Exact Sciences.” A Companion to the Digital Humanities. Susan Schreibman, Ray
Siemens, and John Unsworth, Eds. Blackwell, 2004.
Losh, Elizabeth. Virtualpolitik: An Electronic History of Government Media-Making in a Time of War, Scandal, Disaster,
Miscommunication, and Mistakes. MIT Press, 2009. Print.
College Composition and Communication 07.3 (1956)
Porter, James E. “Interactivity and Rhetoric.” Aims: Armstrong Institute for Interactive Media Studies. Miami University
of Ohio. Feb. 6, 2010. Web.
85.8-121.2
85.8-121.2
sec 102 121=YouTube 1:422:01 (19 sec)
sec 102 - 121=YouTube
1:42-2:01 (19 sec)
begin: 1:42
end: 2:00
begin: 85.5
end: 120
begin: 1:42
end: 2:00
begin: 85.5
end: 120
A Communications Primer
A Communications
(1:06-1:24).
Primer (1:06-1:24).
Charles Eames. 1953. IBM.
Charles Eames. 1953. Prelinger Archives.
IBM. Prelinger
Archive.org. Web. June.
Archives. Archive.org. 2012.
Web. June. 2012.
---. “Recovering Delivery for Digital Rhetoric.” Computers and Composition. 26 (2009): 207-224. Print.
1968
85.8-121.2
sec 102
begin:
sec 102 - 121=YouTube 1:42-2:01 (19 sec)
1:42
121=You
end: 2:00 Tube begin: 1:42
1:42- end: 2:00
begin:
2:01 (19
85.5
sec)
begin: 85.5
end: 120
end: 120
begin:
1:42
end:
“[I]nformation cannot be thought of as outside of its connection with matter, for it is always embodied in some way” –
2:00
Katherine Hayles, How We Become Posthuman
World
begin: As noted, A Communication Primer represents many of the ideas about communication most likely to be endorsed by
85.5
CCCC members in the 1950s and 1960s. From this, we may reasonably extrapolate contemporary lessons about race
end: 120 and racism in America. Yet, as Richard Marback has argued (1996), though racial issues dominated public rhetoric
throughout the first decades of CCCC, the organization itself rarely, if ever, engaged those issues, preferring instead to
focus on the classroom and effective training in classical rhetoric and similar principles for what Robert Connor would
call in 1969 “The Rhetoric of the Open Hand” in opposition to “The Rhetoric of the Closed Fist” he saw exemplified in
the black power movement.
Thus A Communications Primer effectively situates our key question and serves as a starting point for exploring how
this “primer” might work to help us address communications about issues dominating public rhetoric in the real world.
Page 13 of 55
1:42:09-2:02:04
sec 102 121=YouTube 1:422:01 (19 sec)
begin: 1:42
end: 2:00
begin: 85.5
end: 120
Public Domain
18.
Bibliography
Corbett, Edward P.J. “The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed Fist.” CCC 20.5 (Dec. 1969):
288-296. Print.
Hayles, Katherine. How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics. U of
Chicago Press, 1999. Print.
Hawk, Brian. “Re-Opening Public Rhetoric: Corbett’s ‘The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed
Fist.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. (May 2012). Web.
Marback, Richard. “Corbett’s Hand: A Rhetorical Figure for Composition Studies.” CCC 47.2 (May 1996): 180-98.
Print.
PART II: NOISE
TIMESTA CAPTION
MP
2:02LISTEN
2:03.5
2:012:03.5
121.2-122
120.6-122
NARRATION
AUDIO
VIDEO
IMAGE
MAP
TIMELIN CONTEXT
E
121.2-122 121.2- 121.2-122
World
122
1865- 2:01-2:03.5
2:012012
2:03.5
121.2-122
2:01121.2-122 2:03.5 120.6-122
120.6-122 121.2122
120.6122
To listen in what by mid-century had begun to be referred to as the “Age of Mass Communications” is exceedingly
complicated but increasingly vital (see especially NCTE “Reading in an Age of Mass Communication”). In an age of
radio, television, and (now) the internet, local conversations are necessarily informed by information cycling across the
nation and, indeed, the world over the airwaves and other such mechanisms designed for routing the desired
information to others. No local conversation is entirely local. Yet neither is any global conversation entirely beyond the
local. As linguist Alistair Pennycook insists, all language use is local as “space is a central interactive part of the social”
(55). Indeed, “[e]verything happens locally. However global a practice may be, it still always happens locally. . . .” (128,
emphasis added).
In the following sections, we draw attention to three key activities such communication requires: to listen,” to respect,
and to unify. We begin with “listen” to suggest that in many ways listening, as Marshall McLuhen points out beginning
as early 1952, is hardly a choice. “[Y]ou have the freedom—to listen,” McLuhen mockingly reveals in his 1951
Mechanical Bride. To listen, however, is not the same as “to hear.”
Throughout this section, we wish to invoke Krista Ratcliffe’s notion of “rhetorical listening” which she contrasts
purposefully with the silences (“and/or, at best, awkward conversations” [16]) that dominate the vast majority of
discourse about race today. To listen rhetorically, is to listen with a “conscious choice to assume an open stance in
relation to any person, text or culture” (Ratcliffe 17). An intention to understand difference rather than persuade others
places rhetorical agency in the hands of the listener rather than the speaker. It would be a mistake to understand
Ratcliffe as advocating tolerance (the “why can’t we all just get along?” approach to racism). Indeed, Ratcliffe’s
rhetorical listening goes beyond arguments for “tolerance” and “acceptance” that dominate multicultural approaches to
racism which, according to many, contribute to what Eduardo Bonilla-Silva calls the “color-blind racism” that dominates
today (Racism without Racists; see also critical race theory, Psychology Today’s “Why People Cling to Racist Ideas,”
the Southern Poverty Law Center’s “Colorblindness: the New Racism?,” and New America Media’s “Colorblind
Racism: The New Norm”).
Instead of promoting mere “tolerance” of difference, an approach that enables racism to persist in a society far less
obviously populated by racists than in the days of Jim Crow, rhetorical listening offers communicators an opportunity to
“analyze discursive convergences and divergences” together (Ratcliffe 33). In such a system, the core objectives of
communication change. When we listen rhetorically, we are not working to change the hearts and minds of others.
When we listen rhetorically, we are “negotiat[ing] our always evolving standpoints, our identities, with the always
evolving standpoints of others” (Ratcliffe 34).
Page 14 of 55
FOOTNOTE
PERMISSIONS
MISCELLANEO
US
19.
Bibliography
Gray, William S, Ed. Reading in an Age of Mass Communication. Report, National Council of Teachers of English.
Committee on Reading at the Secondary and College Levels. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949. Print.
Pennycook, Alistair. Language as a Local Practice. Routledge, 2010. Print.
Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.
2:04-2:10
122.4-126
122.4-126
“One doesn’t ‘go
public’ simply as
an act of will –
neither by writing,
nor by having an
opinion… The
context of
publicness must
be available,
allowing these
actions to count in
a public way, to
be
transformative.”
Michael Warner,
2005
122.4126
19671973
122.4-126
122.4-126
Throughout this remix, we are attempting to understand local instances of activism, whereby local university students Warner, Michael.
attempted to enact change through the circulation of discourse about race and racism in this context. We offer three Publics and
case studies of local African American student activists who attempted to “go public” (see Warner) with ongoing racial Counterpublics. Zone
injustices in area. The first case study involves John Carlos, former ETSU student and member of the ETSU track
Books, 2005. 66.
team best known for his participation in the silent protest with sprinter Tommie Smith atop the medal stand at the 1968
Olympics in Mexico City. The year before Carlos attempted to “go public” with the persistence of racism and injustice
across the globe he had attempted to do the same in the local context under discussion. Thus, after exploring the
complexities of communication in 1968, we will turn our attention first to the global demonstration for social justice that
occurred at the Mexico City Olympics in October 1968 and, next, to the more local demonstrations in which Carlos was
involved just one year earlier.
The second case study focuses on former ETSU student Joe Tave and his involvement in the formation of the AfroAmerican Student Society of East Texas (ASSET) on the night of MLK’s assignation in April 1968, especially their
“Declaration of Rights” (also in April 1968), which likewise called attention to the persistence of racism in this local
context. ASSET’s “Declaration of Rights” and related work were able to force a series of significant changes at ETSU,
which we will discuss in the final section of “A Clear Channel: Part I.”
The third case study appears in “A Clear Channel: Part II.” In it, we focus on former ETSU student MacArthur Evans
and his involvement in the formation of the Norris Community Club (NCC) in 1973, a university-community partnership
designed to call attention to the racial injustices experienced by local citizens in Norris, the historically segregated
neighborhood.
In each case, the activists involved help illustrate the ways in which, as Michael Warner insists, “One doesn’t ‘go
public’ simply as an act of will – neither by writing, nor by having an opinion… The context of publicness must be
available, allowing these actions to count in a public way, to be transformative.”
***
To listen rhetorically is to negotiate. We begin this section with the notion of “listening” during a particularly complex
period in our recent history: 1968. We suggest throughout that “noise” complicated the desired communication and
enabled the establishment of new channels necessary for that communication. On some levels, very little true
communication took place. Yet it seems that on far more significant levels, communication about race and racism had
never been more present than it was during those difficult months of 1968, and inasmuch as we were able to
“negotiate our always evolving standpoints, our identities, with the always evolving standpoints of others” (Ratcliffe 34),
the communication that occurred across the nation enabled future negotiations across difference in unprecedented
ways. In the sections that follow, we will offer two local examples of those very negotiations—in Part I, the
establishment of the local activist group ASSET (Afro-American Students Society of East Texas) in 1968, and the
unprecedented changes ASSET accomplished in a few short years, and (in Part II), the establishment NCC (Norris
Community Club) in 1973, a partnership between African American students and local citizens on behalf of Norris, the
historically segregated neighborhood in town. In a few short years, they, too, would accomplish unprecedented change
that drew upon the elements of rhetorical listening and established local publics as Michael Warner would define
them—through the circulation of texts (Publics and Coutnerpublics), as we will explain.
Bibliography
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books, 2005.
Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.
Page 15 of 55
20.
2:11-2:20 “Sylvania Radio
126.6-132 Advertisement”
(1950s)
2:11-2:20
126.6-132
2:11-2:20
126.6-132
USA
2:11-2:20 2:11126.6-132 2:20
126.6132
Music: Calandra, Pete, Sylvania Radio Receiver
BMI, Scott P. Schreer, Commercial (1:06-1:15).
BMI. “Hackensack
CBS Television. c1950.
Swing.”
Classic TV
Freeplaymusic.com. Commercials. Archive.org.
Web. Retrieved, June Web.
2012.
June. 2012.
2:21-2:30
132.6-138
1950s
2:11-2:20
126.6-132
2:11-2:20
126.6-132
We build from the assumption that a local public is “text based,” as Michael Warner argues. Indeed, [p]ublics exist not
through a material body but through the process of circulation—the flow, cycling, and transformation of discourse.”
Throughout our investigation into communications about race in this local public, we draw attention to that “process of
circulation” through both the discourse itself and the mechanisms through which that discourse was circulated.
Public Domain
a.
21.
As noted earlier, part of this process takes the shape of mundane texts circulated locally and across the region (the
“Declaration of Rights” by ASSET in 1968, for example, and the charter in 1973 establishing NCC). Another important
element of this circulation is the technology itself, which we identify through the metaphor offered in the radio—a clear
channel station, we suggest, is what the local activists desired and what such mundane documents like those narrated
here established, at least in part.
Additional Audio:
Sylvania Radio
Receiver Commercial
(1:06-1:15).
CBS Television.
c1950. Classic TV
Commercials. Web.
June. 2012.
On AM radio in 2:21
132.6-138
North America
132.6-138
“clear-channel
Music: “Hackensack The Yankee Story.
stations” are
Swing” (continued)
RKO Teleradio Pictures,
those most
Yankee Division. 1956.
protected from 2:23
Prelinger Archives.
interference from 133-138
Archive.org. Web. June.
other stations.
Narration: Shannon 2012.
Carter (original), 2012
Bibliography
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books, 2005.
132.6-138 132.6138
USA
1
950s
132.6-138
132.6-138
“Where there is simple information processing, there is simple experience, and where there is complex information
processing, there is complex experience.” –David J. Chalmers, The Character of Consciousness (27)
Public Domain
22.
True clarity in human communication is, of course, an impossible standard. In few places is this truer than where the
information being processed in that communication concerns something as utterly complex as racism in America. As
David J. Chalmers says of the link between the processing of information and the formation of consciousness,
“complex information” begets “complex experience” and vice versa. Whatever the topic
true clarity in human communication is an impossible standard. As long as we remember this important point,
however, “a clear channel” remains a useful metaphor for understanding the mechanisms that enable communication
across difference.
Bibliography
Chalmers, David J. The Character of Consciousness. Oxford UP, 2010.
2:31-2:43
138.6145.8
Theoretically then 2:33
perhaps then the 139-8-145.8
speech Gee
Narration: Carter
delivered in 1964 (continued)
and the
admissions
2:31
policies that
138.6-145.8
followed should
have enabled the
sorts of
Music:
communication Brewer, Simon, PRS.
across difference “Memorial Park.”
integration
Freeplaymusic.com,
promised.
BMI. Retrieved, June
2012.
138.6-145.8
Original:
Photograph,
James G. Gee
Papers. Special
Collections.
James G. Gee
Library. Texas
A&M-Commerce.
Commerce,
Texas. 2012.
2:31
138.6145.8
Commerc
e, Texas
138.6145.8
1964
138.6-145.8
As a rhetorical event, the speech James G. Gee delivered in June 1964 is a particularly useful starting point for this
investigation of local communication about race and racism in the region. Unlike the local activists whose work we
address later in the remix, Gee did not need to establish communication channels for his speech announcing ETSU’s
plans to remove race as a standard for admission. The communication channels for this conversation already
existed—institutionally, legally, culturally (see Carter, “A Clear Channel”; Carter and Conrad; Carter and Dent).
He delivered this information to the faculty and staff gathered at a “mandatory” meeting in the summer of ‘64. As
university president, he had the authority to call this meeting. As university president, he had the authority to compel
attendance at this meeting and adherence to his mandate that desegregation be met without incident, leading to what
he and the committee members called “a dignified integration.” Unlike the student activists who began agitating for
change on ETSU campus soon after African American students enrolled, Gee could fire faculty and staff members
unwilling to abide by his rules. Indeed, he had done so on more than one occasion, most notably in 1954 when,
following a campus demonstration and the unfortunate press surrounding a highly controversial general education
Page 16 of 55
138.6-145.8
Fair Use
23.
program, he demoted three tenured faculty members who supported the resistance and reportedly required all the
remaining faculty in this growing public university to sign a statement publically declaring their support of ETSU’s
general education program (see Carter, “Un/American Standards”).
On June 1964, President Gee called together a faculty and staff meeting to announce his decision to admit black
students and exhorted the university community to be “civil” when he stated that,
“Our attitudes, our personal conduct, and the manner in which we exercise the utmost of practical and
active good citizenship and self-control will be forever recorded in the annals of this institution, this county,
and the State of Texas as being irreparably bad or infinitely good. …Let us each here pledge to ourselves
and to each other that our individual and joint efforts will always be motivated by the best interest of this
college. …It is my devout wish and fervent prayer that the integration of this college will come about in an
orderly manner.” (Shabazz, 217)
While ET’s early African American students did not face the violence that greeted James Meredith at Ole Miss, or the
mob that forced Steve Poston and Jessalyn Gray to leave Texarkana Junior College, it would be misleading to say that
they were made to feel welcome. http://crdl.usg.edu/events/ole_miss_integration/
Bibliography
Carter, Shannon. “A Clear Channel” (CLJ).
---. “Un/American Standards at ‘The South’s Most Democratic College.” CCCC 2012. St. Louis.
Carer, Shannon and James H. Conrad. “In Posession of Community: Toward a More Sustainable Local.” CCC
Carter, Shannon and Kelly Dent.
Advancing Democracy: African Americans and the Struggle for Access and Equity in Higher Education in Texas.
Amilcar Shabazz. University of North Carolina Press, 2006.
2:44-2:46
146.4147.6
2:44-2:46
146.4-147.6
2:44-2:46
146.4-147.6
The Yankee Story.
Music:
RKO Teleradio Pictures,
Brewer, Simon, PRS. Yankee Division. 1956.
“Memorial Park.”
Prelinger Archives. Web.
Freeplaymusic.com, June. 2012.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
2:47-2:59
148.2155.4
Of course,
proximity alone
did not solve
racism in
America.
Meaningful
communication
across difference
required far more
than a change in
admissions
policies.
2:44-2:46
146.4147.6
2:442:46
146.4USA
147.6
1950s
2:44-2:46
146.4-147.6
2:44-2:46
146.4-147.6
The metaphor “a clear channel” persists throughout the remix. Here and elsewhere we reference this important
framework visually, with a hand seeking an appropriate station. The static that follows indicates the noise that
complicates both the establishment of new channels for communication and one’s ability to locate and listen to
information broadcast through such new channels. Again, true clarity is an impossible standard but “a clear channel”
remains a useful metaphor.
Public Domain
148.2150.6
148.2-155.4
148.2-155.4
2:49
149.4-155.4
2:47-2:51
148.2-150.6
Narration:
Carter (continued)
Martin Luther
Alabama 1958
King, Jr. Arrested.
Photograph.
Charles Moore.
Montgomery,
Alabama, 1958.
151.22:52-2;59
155.4
151.2-155.4
1960s
2:47148.2-155.4
Music: “Memorial
Park” (continued)
Standing Up.
Photograph. Civil
Rights Protest.
c1960s.
148.2150.6
Fair Use
We begin with this premise that “proximity alone didn’t solve racism in America” to highlight the complexities of
communicating about race and racism. Indeed, though King’s Dream of white children and black children attending the
same school has essentially come to pass in modern America, at least by law albeit far too rarely in practice, issues of
communication across difference continue to exist. Proximity has proven to not be enough to address the issue of
racism. Critical race theorists argue that the continued existence of racism is due to the fact that racism is not just
embedded in a nation’s legal framework – it is embedded in that nation’s societal framework, as well, and the racist
legal system merely reflects the racist society. Until racism is eradicated from a people’s societal norms, from their
very thoughts, it will continue to be an issue.
We might assume, then, that communication can serve as a useful mechanism in the long fight for racial justice. Yet
effective communication across difference requires more than an act of will and a good argument. No matter how well
meaning the speakers and listeners, no matter how earnest and “effective” the speaker, no single text or speaker can
solve any societal problem. As Warner insists, “quote about public requirement more than a single text or speaker”
Notes
Representative Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., once described himself as the product of “the sustained indignation of a
branded grandfather, the militant protest of [his] grandmother, the disciplined resentment of [his] father and mother,
Page 17 of 55
24.
25.
and the power of the mass action of the church.” (9) The black church, which has its roots in the days of slavery and
has maintained its position at the center of African American culture and life, served as the organizational hub of the
modern American Civil Rights Movement. This classic phase of the Civil Rights Movement is often described as
beginning in June 1953 with the Baton Rouge bus boycotts and ending with the April 1968 assassination of King. An
adherence to the principle of non-violence and mass action set the modern Movement apart from earlier and following
Civil Rights Movements. Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., himself a product of – and preacher in – the black church,
served as the public, media-friendly face of the modern American Civil Rights Movement.
3:00-3:16 “Crisis in Levittown”
180-189.6 (1957)
3:00-3:16
180-189.6
3:00-3:16
180-189.6
Crisis in Levittown.
Crisis in Levittown. (14:15(14:15-14:33). Prod. 14:33). Prod. Lee Bobker
Lee Bobker and Lester and Lester Becker. Dynamic
Becker. Dynamic
Films. 1957. Academic Film
Films. 1957. Academic Archive of North America.
Film Archive of North Web. Apr. 2012.
America. Web. Apr.
2012.
3:00-3:16 3:00180-189.6 3:16
180Levittown, 189.6
Pennsylva
nia
1957
Even after ETSU desegregated in 1964, the campus’ black students were not wholly integrated into campus life. At the
same time that pioneering African American students were enduring disdain from their professors and classmates, the
college allowed open displays of white supremacist leanings. It took several years before the administration at ETSU
would finally move with the times and begin working to meet the needs of their minority students.
3:00-3:16
180-189.6
“Crisis at Levittown” (1957) offers a particularly useful illustration of the problem with arguments that proximity can
solve racism in America or at least enable effective communication that might help eradicate it. The African American
family who moved into this all-white community was terrorized by many local citizens, despite the extensive
preparations of many white community members attempting to avoid such violent demonstrations.
3:00-3:16
180-189.6
26.
Fair Use
For some time before the (Walkers?) arrived, a citizen group met regularly to discuss (?) (need name of group and a
quote or two about their key goals). Despite their attempts, as one citizen explains, “something about either it was
ineffective or vew few people heard about it so it ws ineffective, which is what she thought happened (or something to
that effect). Despite the best efforts of many citizens, rumors continued to circulate concerning the motives of the
Walkers (“race mixing”) and the political agenda (many assumed a communist group or some other area left-leaning
org had purchased the home on their behalf to incite problems.
Indeed, communication broke down on all sides . As the narrator explains in this clip, “the past slips through despite
what is said.”
Levittown has gone down in history as an example of racism, but it is certainly not the only suburb that has proven
unwelcoming of minorities. When the Brown decision was finally enforced across the nation, urban centers became
subject to what has been euphemistically termed “white flight,” where middle and upper class whites have fled the
inner cities to establish suburbs, with the goal of educating their children in majority-white schools. Legal action against
these predominantly white school districts has largely failed, however, and some suburbs, especially in the North,
remain bastions of white suburbia.
3:17-3:30 “A Communications
190.2-198 Primer” (1953)
3:17-3:30
190.2-198
3:17-3:30
190.2-198
A Communications
Primer (1:27-1:38).
Charles Eames. IBM.
1953. Prelinger
Archives. Web. June.
2012.
A Communications Primer
(1:27-1:38).
Charles Eames. IBM. 1953.
Prelinger Archives. Web.
June. 2012.
3:17-3:30 3:17190.2-198 3:30
190.2USA
198
1953
27.
3:17-3:30
190.2-198
Public Domain
Here we return to A Communications Primer in order to draw forward the notion of “noise” as defined by Clyde
Shannon in “A Mathematical Theory of Communications” (1949), the theoretical framework on which this film is loosely
based. Shannon, a mathematician, was primarily concerned with the technical aspects of “noise”—a key concern for
engineers attempting to transfer information through the wire-based and broadcasting systems dominating
communication technologies at the time. Noise affected the transfer of ones voice over telephone lines, especially long
distance, as well as the distance traveled by a radio wave, which may be blocked by the physical landscape, the limits
of the equipment available for transfer or the receiving apparatus, or any other such factor, including competing
signals. Taken literally, noise simply refers to any outside force that acts on the transmitted signal in ways that disrupt
its ability to reach the receiver intact.
Yet Weaver’s contributions to Shannon’s theory of communication, as well as Eames’s A Communications Primer
upon which it is loosely based, helped extend this notion of “noise” to human communication. In short, human
communication is likewise challenged by noise. It is utterly unavoidable but not altogether undesirable. In “The
Aesthetics of Noise” (2002), Torben Sangild offers a particularly useful discuss of noise’s etymology:
What is noise?
Page 18 of 55
Etymologically, the term "noise" in different Western languages (støj, bruit, Geräusch, larm etc.) refers to
states of aggression, alarm and tension and to powerful sound phenomena in nature such as storm,
thunder and the roaring sea. It is worth noting in particular that the word "noise" comes from Greek
nausea, referring not only to the roaring sea, but also to seasickness, and that the German Geräusch is
derived from rauschen (the sough of the wind), related to Rausch (ecstasy, intoxication), thus pointing
towards some of the aesthetic, bodily effects of noise in music.
To return to Krista Ratcliffe’s “rhetorical listening,” we might productively assert that “noise” likewise challenges our
ability to listen to one another—at all but certainly rhetorically. As noted later in A Communications Primer, “the
background of the receiver may so differ from the transmitter as to make” meaningful communication between the two
“almost impossible.” We will refer to this point again later in the remix, but we bring it up now to suggest that noise
challenged rhetorical listening.
We also bring it up now to suggest another element to which we will return at several points throughout this project:
noise enabled the circulation of discourse that established counterpublics, as Michael Warner defines them, necessary
for meaningful communication about difference. In other words, noise made rhetorical listening difficult but noise also
made rhetorical listening possible.
Bibliography
Sangild, Torben. “The Aesthetics of Noise.” UbuWeb Papers. Datanom. 2002. Web. July 31, 2012.
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books, 2005.
Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.
3:31-3:35
end: 3:34
198.6201200.4
3:31-3:35
end: 3:34
198.6-201200.4
3:31-3:35
end: 3:34
198.6-201200.4
“The March on Washington.”
“The March on
(5:41-5:50). 1963. National
Washington.” (5:41- Archives and Records
5:50). 1963. National Administration. US
Archives and Records Information Agency. FedFlix
Administration. US
Collection. Archive.org.
Information Agency. Web. Apr. 2012.
FedFlix Collection.
Archive.org. Web. Apr.
2012.
3:31-3:35
end: 3:34
198.6201200.4
3:313:35
3:31-3:35
end:
end: 3:34
3:34
198.6-201200.4
198.6“The
201200. The perfect orator, argued Quintilian (35 BCE), is a “good man speaking well.” No doubt Martin Luther King, Jr. met
March on 4
that standard in the vast majority of his speaking appearances. Perhaps the most iconic of his speaking appearances
Washingto
is the one that most defines the Civil Rights Movement for a great many Americans: The March on Washington for
n.” (5:41- “The
Jobs and Freedom held in Washington DC on August 28, 1963, where King delivered his I Have a Dream speech to
5:50).
March between 200,000 and 300,000 protesters at one of the largest political rallies the nation’s capital had ever seen up to
1963.
on
that point.
National Washing
Archives ton.”
Most certainly King’s I Have a Dream speech met Quintilian’s standard for “a good man speaking well. MLK was,
and
(5:41- indeed, a “good man” “speaking” a persuasive message communicated broadly across a wide array of communication
Records 5:50). channels, including radio and television sets across the world. Of course communication about such matters depends
Administra 1963. on far more than the section of the right words for the right audience spoken by the right person.
tion. US National
Informatio Archives
Indeed the March on Washington was, itself, actually one of a series of marches, garnered widespread media
n Agency. and
coverage, though, as is the media’s tendency, the actual purpose of the March was diluted. While King’s Dream has
FedFlix Records
gone down in the annals of history, the March’s actual demands, including a federal jobs training program, the
Collection. Administ
replacement of the minimum wage with a living wage, a broader Fair Labor Standards Act to account for all areas of
Archive.or ration.
employment, and a federal Fair Employment Practices Act to eradicate all forms of discrimination, have been swept
g. Web. US
under the rug. The sanitation of King’s message occurred even during his own lifetime.
Apr. 2012. Informati
on
Bibliography
Washingto Agency.
1963 Timeline of Protests
n DC
FedFlix
March on Washington, Home Page
Collectio
I Have a Dream
n.
http://crdl.usg.edu/events/march_on_washington/
Archive.
Page 19 of 55
3:31-3:35
end: 3:34
198.6-201200.4
Public Domain
28.
org.
Web.
Apr.
2012.
3:36-3:38
201.6202.8
August
28,
1963
3:36-3:38
3:36-3:38 201.6- 201.6-202.8
201.6-202.8
201.6202.8
202.8
Throughout, our notion of “noise” means far more than the unintentional disruption of desired communication. Noise
Police Using
1963
can be used rhetorically and intentionally, with good will and a social justice imperative. Shannon (Carter) explores this
Dogs to Attack
intentional, rhetorical use of noise elsewhere. The current remix and the surrounding scholarly annotations will focus
Protesters.
Birmingha
less on the rhetorical use of noise and instead build from Joseph Nechvatal’s “noise art,” which he describes “as that
Photograph.
m,
art which precludes established significance by replacing the assumption of conclusive meaning with one of vital
Birmingham,
Alabama
excess” (Introduction). Excess certainly must characterize any attempts to communicate about social justice in 1968,
Alabama, April 3,
and it is this very excess we attempt to “immerse” ourselves and our viewers in order to better understand the
1963.
communication challenges and possibilities at the time.
3:36-3:38
Noise both
201.6-202.8
complicated the
desired
Narration: Carter
communication (continued)
Music: “March on
Washington”
(continued)
Music (additional):
Original--Adam
Sparks, Garage Band,
2012
201.6-202.8
29.
Public Domain
We thus return to more familiar illustrations of such communication efforts, especially those in which Martin Luther
King, Jr., was involved. King was, of course, deeply aware of the vital role played by kairos in any communicative
event. Alongside a wide array of activists with similar goals, King cultivated the rhetorical spaces (Code) and
counterpublics (Warner) necessary to make rhetorical events like the March on Washington meaningful.
To garner support for their cause, for example, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, a Civil Rights
organization headed by Dr. King, began operating in Birmingham, Alabama, knowing that Commissioner Bull Connor,
an ardent segregationist, would react. As Connor’s men sicced dogs and turned fire hoses on black protesters,
international support for the cause of Civil Rights surged. Embroiled in a Cold War against the Soviet Union for
ideological control over the developing world, the nation could hardly afford bad press regarding its treatment of black
citizens, but the Soviet Union responded to the violence in Birmingham by devoting a quarter of its news coverage to
the affair and broadcasting that coverage to newly independent African countries.
Dr. King wrote the Letter from Birmingham Jail on April 16, 1963, after he was jailed for protesting the city’s
segregationist policies. King’s letter was in response to the arguments presented by eight white Alabama clergymen
who acknowledged that injustice existed, but that it should be fought in the courts – not the streets – and by
Alabamans, not outsiders like King. King responded eloquently that “injustice anywhere is a threat to just everywhere,”
a theme he later returned to when he preached that “A genuine revolution of values…calls for worldwide fellowship
that lifts neighborly concern beyond one’s tribe, race, class and nation.”
Bibliography
Statement by Alabama Clergymen
Letter from Birmingham Jail
Why I am Opposed to the War in Vietnam
Nechvatal, Joseph. Immersion into Noise. Open Humanities Press. Critical Climate Change Series, 2011.
3:39-3:42
203.4205.2
and enabled the 3:39-3:42
establishment of 203.4-205.2Music:
new channels
“March on
necessary for that Washington”
communication. (continued from
above)
Music (additional):
3:39-3:42
203.4-205.2
“The March on Washington.”
(5:11-5:17). 1963. National
Archives and Records
Administration. US
Information Agency. FedFlix
Collection. Archive.org.
3:39-3:42 3:39203.43:42
205.2
203.4Washingto 205.2
n DC
April 28,
1963
3:39-3:42
203.4-205.2
We suggest throughout that noise did more than simply disrupt the desired communication. In many instances, it also
enabled the establishment of new channels necessary for the desired communication. We see several instances of
this throughout the following remix, most notably the Silent Protest by sprinters John Carlos and Tommie Smith at the
Mexico City Olympics in 1968. We also insist that “noise,” even in this more positive sense, is far from contained. It is
defined by the very excess that gives it its meaning.
Page 20 of 55
3:39-3:42
203.4-205.2
Public Domain
30.
Original--Adam
Web. Apr. 2012.
Sparks, Garage Band,
2012
One of the many ways we see noise at work is in the tensions between an inappropriately simplified and inaccurate
version of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s message as one of unproblematic negotiation with the existing racial dynamics in
opposition to the equally simplified and inaccurate version of Malcolm X’s message as one of violent resistance alone.
Indeed, though the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom has gone down in the national narrative as a shining
moment in American history, it was not without its critics, even among fellow black activists. Malcolm X, who described
himself as a “black nationalist freedom fighter,” exhorted fellow blacks to recognize that the government has failed
African Americans, saying that “anytime you’re walking around singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ and it’s 1964, the
government has failed.” He encouraged activists to “stop singing and start swinging” because “you can’t sing up on
freedom.” African Americans were failed both by the government, and the “white liberals who have been posing as our
friends,” according to Malcolm, who also ridiculed the sit-ins employed by the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee to desegregate lunch counters in the South, stating that “a coward can sit…it’s time for us to start doing
some standing.”
Bibliography
MLK's I Have a Dream Remembered
National Archives and Records Administration
The March on Washington
Malcolm X, The Ballot or the Bullet, April 12, 1964
3:43-3:52
205.8211.2
3:43-3:52
205.8-211.2
Music: “March on
Washington”
(continued)
3:43-3:52
205.8-211.2
3:43-3:52 3:43205.83:52
211.2
205.8Birmingha 211.2
m,
1963
Alabama
“Segregation at All Costs:
Bull Conner and the Civil
Rights Movement” (0:24Music (additional):
0:40). Eamon Ronan.
Original--Adam
National History Day
Sparks, Garage Band, documentary. YouTube.
2012
2009. Web. June 2012.
3;53-4:01
211.8240.6
The process
began the minute
the first African
American
students set foot
on our campus.
3;53-4:01
211.8-240.6
3;53-4:01
Narration: Carter
(continued)
Music: “March on
Washington”
(continued)
Music (additional):
Original--Adam
Sparks, Garage Band,
2012
3:43-3:52
205.8-211.2
Few places is the complexity of communication more clearly and firmly illustrated than in the horrifying scenes coming
across the airwaves from Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963. As the situation in Birmingham deteriorated in early 1963,
famed segregationist Governor George Wallace, who would perform his infamous Stand in the Schoolhouse Door one
month later, sent in state troopers to assist Connor. Federal troops were sent in to restore order, though September
1963 saw the bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church and the deaths of the famous “four little girls,” that helped earn
the city the nickname of “Bombingham.”
3:43-3:52
205.8-211.2
31.
Fair Use
Biography
4 Little Girls
Dr. Henry Ross Oral History
See also (especially) Angela Davis on growing up in Birmingham and the role of violence as defense, to protect ones
family and communities from the violence that persists against black America by white segregationists like those
Governor George Wallace and others were then insisting upon protecting and supporting.
Project "C" in Birmingham
3;53-4:01
211.8-240.6
3;53-4:01 3;53211.84:01
ET Apr10 1968 p2 240.6
211.8240.6
“No Need for
Commerc
Worry About
e, Texas 1964Apathy.” East
1973
Texan. April 10,
1968. 2.
Commerce:
Texas A&MCommerce
Special
Collections.
Commerce,
Texas.
3;53-4:01
211.8-240.6
3;53-4:01
211.8-240.6
The classic Civil Rights Movement owes much of its success to the positive intersectionality of foreign policy, a Cold
War, and the accessibility provided by the television. Unlike the situation during earlier Movements, Jason Sokol notes
that, “[v]iolent racism in the South handed America’s foes incontrovertible proof that injustice endured in the United
States. …Racial violence in the South not only leant grist to the communist propaganda mill, but also encouraged
other nations to criticize America,” (37). While white southerners, especially violent segregationists like Bull Connor
and George Wallace, continued to employ “any means necessary” to keep black Americans in their “place,” but their
actions “no longer occurred in a geographic vacuum,” (37).
Fair Use
In an era where, “[a]nti-communist hysteria” reigned, “its ability to become tangled up in race relations was especially
pervasive in the South. …Many white southerners pictured the National Association for the Advancement of Colored
People and the Communist Party as one and the same, blacks who struggled for equality became dupes of a Soviet
scheme, and northern advocates of civil rights looked like communist-inspired ‘outside agitators.’ The black and red
menaces shaded into each other. It colored white southerners’ perceptions of the federal government, the civil rights
movement, and the African-Americans in their towns,” (37-8).
Page 21 of 55
32.
Bibliography
Jason Sokol. There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975. New York: Vintage
Books, 2006.
4:02-4:14 Commissioner “Bull”
Connor
241.2248.4
4:02-4:14
4:02-4:14
241.2-248.4
4:02-4:14
Music: “March on
Washington”
(continued)
241.2-248.4
“Segregation at All Costs:
Bull Conner and the Civil
Rights Movement” (0:000:18). Eamon Ronan.
National History Day
documentary. 2009. Web.
June 2012.
Music (additional):
Original--Adam
Sparks, Garage Band,
2012
4:02-4:14 4:024:14
241.2248.4
241.2Alabama 248.4
1963
4:02-4:14
4:02-4:14
241.2-248.4
Theophilus Eugene “Bull” Connor (1897-1973) served as Commissioner of Public Safety for Birmingham, AL, during
the Civil Rights Movement. His position meant that he had administrative oversight for the Police and Fire
departments. Connor’s reaction to the Civil Rights Movement made him the public face of segregationists, and
backfired when national and international outrage led to him being ordered to vacate his office by the Alabama
Supreme Court when Birmingham’s voters elected to alter their form of government.
241.2-248.4
Fair Use
33.
Ironically, a year after the 1963 public relations debacle that was Birmingham, Connor was elected to serve as the
state’s Public Service Commission director. After losing a battle for a third term as director, Connor’s political career
ended a year before his death.
Bibliography
http://www.encyclopediaofalabama.org/face/Article.jsp?id=h-1091
PART III: CARLOS
TIMESTA CAPTION
MP
4:15-4:18 RESPECT
255-258
3 sec
NARRATION
AUDIO
VIDEO
IMAGE
MAP
TIMELI CONTEXT
NE
Youtube 4:17-4:22, Sec 257-262 (5 sec)
FOOTNOTE
Throughout this remix, we are attempting to understand local instances of activism, whereby local university students
attempted to enact change through the circulation of discourse about race and racism in this context. We offer three
case studies of local African American student activists who attempted to “go public” (see Warner) with ongoing racial
injustices in area. The first case study involves John Carlos, former ETSU student and member of the ETSU track team
best known for his participation in the silent protest with sprinter Tommie Smith atop the medal stand at the 1968
Olympics in Mexico City. The year before Carlos attempted to “go public” with the persistence of racism and injustice
across the globe he had attempted to do the same in the local context under discussion. Thus, after exploring the
complexities of communication in 1968, we will turn our attention first to the global demonstration for social justice that
occurred at the Mexico City Olympics in October 1968 and, next, to the more local demonstrations in which Carlos was
involved just one year earlier.
The second case study focuses on former ETSU student Joe Tave and his involvement in the formation of the AfroAmerican Student Society of East Texas (ASSET) on the night of MLK’s assignation in April 1968, especially their
“Declaration of Rights” (also in April 1968), which likewise called attention to the persistence of racism in this local
context. ASSET’s “Declaration of Rights” and related work were able to force a series of significant changes at ETSU,
which we will discuss in the final section of “A Clear Channel: Part I.”
The third case study appears in “A Clear Channel: Part II.” In it, we focus on former ETSU student MacArthur Evans
and his involvement in the formation of the Norris Community Club (NCC) in 1973, a university-community partnership
designed to call attention to the racial injustices experienced by local citizens in Norris, the historically segregated
neighborhood.
In each case, the activists involved help illustrate the ways in which, as Michael Warner insists, “One doesn’t ‘go public’
simply as an act of will – neither by writing, nor by having an opinion… The context of publicness must be available,
allowing these actions to count in a public way, to be transformative.”
***
To listen rhetorically is to negotiate. We begin this section with the notion of “listening” during a particularly complex
Page 22 of 55
PERMISSIONS
MISCELLANEO
US
34.
period in our recent history: 1968. We suggest throughout that “noise” complicated the desired communication and
enabled the establishment of new channels necessary for that communication. On some levels, very little true
communication took place. Yet it seems that on far more significant levels, communication about race and racism had
never been more present than it was during those difficult months of 1968, and inasmuch as we were able to “negotiate
our always evolving standpoints, our identities, with the always evolving standpoints of others” (Ratcliffe 34), the
communication that occurred across the nation enabled future negotiations across difference in unprecedented ways.
In the sections that follow, we will offer two local examples of those very negotiations—in Part I, the establishment of
the local activist group ASSET (Afro-American Students Society of East Texas) in 1968, and the unprecedented
changes ASSET accomplished in a few short years, and (in Part II), the establishment NCC (Norris Community Club) in
1973, a partnership between African American students and local citizens on behalf of Norris, the historically
segregated neighborhood in town. In a few short years, they, too, would accomplish unprecedented change that drew
upon the elements of rhetorical listening and established local publics as Michael Warner would define them—through
the circulation of texts (Publics and Coutnerpublics), as we will explain.
Bibliography
Warner, Michael. Publics and Counterpublics. Zone Books, 2005.
Ratcliffe, Krista. Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness. Southern Illinois UP, 2005. Print.
4:18-4:23 4:18-4:23
4 sec
258-263 258-262
He who is reluctant
to recognize me
opposes me.” Frantz
Fanon (1952)
4:18
258
Music - Original -Adam Sparks, Garage
Band, 2012
4:18-4:22
4 sec
258-262
4:20-4:22
Sec 260- 4:20262 (2
4:22
sec)
Sec
Frantz Fanon.
260Photograph.
Algeria 262 (2
“Frantz Fanon’s
sec)
Afterlife: On the
1952
50th Anniversary
of His Death.”
Michael Keating.
African
Arguments. Royal
African Society.
Dec. 22, 2011.
Web. July 2012.
4:20-4:22
4:20-4:22
Sec 260-262 (2 sec)
Sec 260-262 (2 sec)
Frantz Fanon (1925-1961), a Franco-Algerian philosopher, revolutionary, and author, became influential in postFanon, Frantz. Black
colonialism, critical theory, and Marxism. Fanon, who was born on Martinique, at the time a French colony, experienced Skin, White Masks.
French racism during the Second World War both when living in Martinique, as French naval troops were blockaded on Grove Press, 1952.
218.
the island, and when serving in the French army, when he and his fellow Caribbean soldiers were transferred from their
regiment to another locale so that the media would only portray white Frenchmen liberating their nation.
In 1952, Fanon wrote Black Skin, White Masks, which analyzes the psychological effects of colonialism on blacks.
Black Skin presents both Fanon’s personal experiences living as a black intellectual in a white world, and discusses
how the colonizer/colonized relationship is rendered normal in psychology. According to Fanon, cultural racism harms
the psychological wellbeing of blacks.
Trained as a psychologist, Fanon ended up practicing in Algeria, then a French colony fighting a war of independence.
Fanon, scarred by his experiences of racism both in a French colony and in France itself, came to support the
revolutionaries, as evidenced in The Wretched of the Earth (1961), which argues that colonized people have the right to
use violence in their struggle for independence.
His works have influenced anti-colonial and national liberation movements, and The Wretched of the Earth influenced
Ali Shariati in Iran, Steve Biko in South Africa, Malcolm X in the United States, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara in Cuba.
Bibliography
Poulos, Jennifer. "Frantz Fanon." Frantz Fanon. Emory University, 1996. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.english.emory.edu/Bahri/Fanon.html>.
Nicholls, Tracey. "Frantz Fanon." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. University of Tennessee, 29 Sept. 2011. Web.
July 2012. <http://www.iep.utm.edu/fanon/>.
Page 23 of 55
35.
4:23-4:29 4:24-4:27
6sec
3 sec
263-269 264-267
Joshua, Black Boy
of Harlem (1969)
YouTube 4:23-4:29
Sec 263-269 (6 sec)
Continued
Music - Original -Adam Sparks, Garage
Band, 2012
YouTube 4:23-4:29
Sec 263-269 (6 sec)
Joshua, Black Boy of
Harlem.
(0:56-1:07). Prod. Bert
Salzman. 1969. Academic
Film Archive of North
America. Archive.org. Web.
June 2011.
YouTube
4:23-4:29
Sec 263269 (6
sec)
Harlem,
NY
YouTub YouTube 4:23-4:29
e 4:23- Sec 263-269 (6 sec)
4:29
Sec
We use this short film about a young man leaving his home in Harlem, NY, for a track scholarship at a university in
263- Texas as a way to introduce John Carlos, also from Harlem, NY, leaving home for a track scholarship at East Texas
269 (6 State University in 1966. Like Carlos, Joshua appears confident, ready to face whatever unknown. In this scene, his
sec) friend asks him if the college is giving him a scholarship. “They better,” Joshua responds,” something about a full, free
ride.” Young Carlos, too, was confident. He was already well aware of his prowess as a sprinter. He knew ETSU
needed him, and he was eager to take that next step. Carlos was understandably concerned about racial problems in
1969 the South and worried that Texas might be likewise.as the rest.
YouTube 4:23-4:29
Sec 263-269 (6 sec)
36.
Public Domain
Unable to find out anything about the filmmaker, but with so many similarities between John Carlos (from Harlem) and
“Joshua,” “Black Boy of Harlem,” coupled with the timing of the film (in 1969, one year after Carlos took the global stage
alongside Tommie Smith at the 1968 Olympics), it seems safe to assume this film is inspired on some level by Carlos’s
life.
4:29-4:52 4:36-4:40
23 sec
4 sec
263-292 276-280
President JFK,
arriving in Dallas
(1963)
YouTube 4:32-4:52, YouTube 4:32-4:52, Sec
Sec 272-292 (20 sec) 272-292 (20 sec)
YouTube 4:29YouTube 4:30-4:53, sec 270-293 (23 sec)
4:31, sec 269-271 YouTube YouTub
(2 sec)
4:30-4:52, e 4:30“JFK Arrives in Dallas,
sec 270- 4:52, President John F. Kennedy won election in 1960 in one of the closest presidential elections of the 20th century. The proTexas, on November 22, Love Field
Continued
Civil Rights platforms of Kennedy and challenger Richard Nixon angered the segregationist South, and Kennedy
292 (22 sec
1963” (1:41-1:50; 2:55-3:02;
Music - Original -270- carried Texas by a mere 46,000 votes, almost certainly due to the presence of Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson on the
sec)
5:03-5:12)
YouTube.
March
Adam Sparks, Garage
292 (22 ticket as the Vice Presidential candidate.
17, 2010. Web. June 2012.
Band, 2012
sec)
Dallas, TX
As president during the modern Civil Rights Movement, Kennedy was constantly confronted with a public relations
nightmare as the South stubbornly refused to jettison racial discrimination. Like his predecessor, President Dwight D.
Novem Eisenhower, Kennedy was often faced with concerns over the international response to violent, pro-segregationist
ber 23, reactionaries. Just as “Ike” was forced to respond to attempts to block federal orders and Supreme Court judgments
1963 requiring desegregation to reduce anti-American rhetoric abroad, so Kennedy was forced to act in response to
segregationists like Sheriff Jim Clark and Commissioner Bull Connor. Kennedy’s reluctant support of Civil Rights meant
that his popularity across the South plummeted, especially with the passage of a Civil Rights Bill looming ahead. To try
to garner support for the upcoming 1964 general election and to smooth over frictions in the Democratic Party,
Kennedy and his advisers planned a trip to Texas for November 1963. Stops were planned for San Antonio, Houston,
Fort Worth, Dallas, and Austin.
YouTube 4:30-4:53,
sec 270-293 (23 sec)
Fair Use
37.
YouTube 4:53-4:58
Sec 294-298 (5 sec)
38.
Bibliography
4:53-4:58
5 sec
293-298
YouTube 4:53-4:58
Sec 293-298 (5 sec)
Ends at 4:58
298
Music - Original -Adam Sparks, Garage
Band, 2012
YouTube 4:53-4:58 Sec
293-298 (5 sec)
“JFK Assassination
Motorcade from Love Field
to Dealey Plaza on to
Parkland Hospital 22 Nov
1963” (5:50-5:55). YouTube.
Nov 20, 2010. Web. June
2012.
Byrne, Jeb. "The Hours before Dallas: A Recollection by President Kennedy's Fort Worth Advance Man." Prologue
Magazine. The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Summer 2000. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2000/summer/jfk-last-day-1.html>.
YouTube YouTub YouTube 4:53-4:58 Sec 293-298 (5 sec)
4:53-4:58 e 4:53Sec 293- 4:58 In Dallas, President Kennedy was joined by his wife, First Lady Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy, Governor John Connally,
and Connally’s wife Nellie, in a presidential motorcade. Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas’ Dealey Plaza, by Lee
298 (5
Sec
293- Harvey Oswald, who was himself shot and killed before he could come to trial.
sec)
298 (5
sec)
Dallas, TX
Novem
ber 25,
Page 24 of 55
Fair Use
1963
4:58-5:00
2 sec
298-300
YouTube 4:58-5:00, shot
Sec 298-300 (2 Sec)
Shotgun
YouTube 4:585:00, Sec 298300 (2 Sec)
YouTube YouTub YouTube 4:58-5:00, Sec 298-300 (2 Sec)
4:58-5:00, e 4:58- The modern Civil Rights Movement was noted for its ability to command national and international headlines. Blessed
Sec 298- 5:00, with the charismatic Dr. King, the fight for African American political equality in the face of violent opposition galvanized
300 (2
Sec
international criticism about the United States’ rhetoric on democracy clashing with the realities displayed at home.
JFK and Tanner Sec)
298President Kennedy, therefore, was being forced to respond, just as his predecessors Truman and Eisenhower, were
300 (2
Washingto Sec) forced to respond.
n D.C.
June
11,
1903
1963
YouTube 4:58-5:00,
Sec 298-300 (2 Sec)
39.
Fair Use
Kennedy, an upper-class northerner with little firsthand experience of de jure segregation, remained cautious on the
issue of civil rights, especially as he sought re-election in 1964 and needed a recalcitrant South to have any chance of
victory. We know now that Kennedy would not live to see the 1964 general election, but during his first (and only) term
in office, Kennedy consistently positioned himself with an eye on winning a second term, leading to some fairly tentative
responses to national crises and fairly radical responses to international situations such as the Bay of Pigs, Cuban
Missile Crisis, and Vietnam War.
While no major civil rights legislation was enacted during Kennedy’s term, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting
Rights Act were pushed through Congress by his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a long record of civil
rights support in his native Texas.
Bibliography
JFK & Civil Rights
Time
Civil Rights Quandary
NEH Kennedy & the Civil Rights Movement
"Civil Rights Movement." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.jfklibrary.org/JFK/JFK-in-History/Civil-Rights- Movement.aspx>.
Dallek, Robert. "The Lessons of J.F.K.: His Cautious Path to Civil Rights." Time Specials. Time.com, 21 June
2007. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0%2C28804%2C1635958_1635999_1634940%2C00.html>.
Dallek, Robert. "President John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Quandary." American History Magazine Aug.
2003. President John F. Kennedy's Civil Rights Quandary. 12 June 2006. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.historynet.com/president-john-f-kennedys-civil-rights-quandary.htm>.
"JFK, Freedom Riders and the Civil Rights Movement | EDSITEment." EDSITEment. National Endowment for the
Humanities, 17 Nov. 2010. Web. July 2012. <http://edsitement.neh.gov/lesson-plan/kennedy-administrationand-civil-rights-movement>.
5:00-5:02
2 sec
300-302
YouTube 5:00-5:02,
Sec 300-302 (2 sec)
Shotgun
shot
YouTube 5:005:02, Sec 300302 (2 sec)
YouTube YouTub YouTube 5:00-5:02, Sec 300-302 (2 sec)
5:00-5:02, e 5:00Sec 300- 5:02, The modern Civil Rights Movement was noted for its ability to command national and international headlines. Blessed
302 (2
Sec
with the charismatic Dr. King, the fight for African American political equality in the face of violent opposition galvanized
“Civil Rights
sec)
300international criticism about the United States’ rhetoric on democracy clashing with the realities displayed at home.
March on
302 (2
Washington DC” Commerc sec) President Kennedy, therefore, was being forced to respond, just as his predecessors Truman and Eisenhower, were
1963 Aug. 28.
e TX
April 5, forced to respond.
Photograph.
1968
Library of
Kennedy, an upper-class northerner with little firsthand experience of de jure segregation, remained cautious on the
Page 25 of 55
YouTube 5:00-5:02,
Sec 300-302 (2 sec)
Fair Use
40.
Congress Prints
and Photographs
Division.
Washington DC.
LC-U9-10364-37.
Web. Feb. 2012.
issue of civil rights, especially as he sought re-election in 1964 and needed a recalcitrant South to have any chance of
victory. We know now that Kennedy would not live to see the 1964 general election, but during his first (and only) term
in office, Kennedy consistently positioned himself with an eye on winning a second term, leading to some fairly tentative
responses to national crises and fairly radical responses to international situations such as the Bay of Pigs, Cuban
Missile Crisis, and Vietnam War.
While no major civil rights legislation was enacted during Kennedy’s term, the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1965 Voting
Rights Act were pushed through Congress by his successor, Lyndon Baines Johnson, who had a long record of civil
rights support in his native Texas.
YouTube
5:02-5:04,
sec 302304 (2
sec)
YouTube 5:02-5:04,
sec 302-304 (2 sec)
5:05-5:20 5:07-5:09
305-320 307-309
15 sec
2sec
Begins 5:19
319
Music: Scott P.
Schreer, BMI, “Soul
Longing,”
Freeplaymusic,
freeplaymusic.com
Shotgun
Walter Cronkite
(CBS), 1963
JFK & Civil Rights
Time
Civil Rights Quandary
NEH Kennedy & the Civil Rights Movement
Dowd Hall, Jacquelyn. "The Long Civil Rights Movement and Political Uses of the Past." The Journal of American
History March 91.4 (2005): 1233-263. Web. 3 Aug. 2012.
YouTube 5:02-5:04, sec
YouTube
YouTube 5:02-5:04, sec 302-304 (2 sec)
302-304 (2 sec)
YouTube 5:02- 5:02-5:04, YouTub The day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated, the students at
5:04, sec 302-304 sec 302- e 5:02- ETSU gathered in front of the Sam Rayburn Student Center to form an
shot
(2 sec)
304 (2
5:04, impromptu assembly led by United Students Senator Joe Tave who led a march
“No Need for
sec)
sec
across the campus with approximately 350 African American and Caucasian
Worry About
302- students. Tave reminisced about the event in an interview taken in June
Apathy.” East
304 (2 2012 where he remembered staying up all night to write the speech he gave
Texan. April 10, Commerc sec) response to King's murder. During this extremely turbulent period on the
1968. 2.
e TX
April 5, campus in Commerce, many African American students were in distress and
Commerce:
1968 they turned to Tave for leadership just as the nation had previously turned
Texas A&Mto Dr. King.
Commerce
Special
Collections.
Commerce,
Texas.
YouTube 5:05-5:20, sec
YouTube
YouTube 5:05-5:20, sec 305-320 (15 sec)
305-320 (15 sec)
5:05-5:20, YouTub For the fourth time in the United States’ history, the nation lost its leader to a violent assassination. Unlike the earlier
sec 305- e 5:05- assassinations of Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley, however, the Kennedy assassination occurred in the age of
“Walter Cronkite Announces
320 (15 5:20, television, thereby allowing immediate accessibility to millions in America and around the world.
Death of JFK” (5:02-5:17)
sec) end sec
YouTube. March 27, 2009.
305A world endlessly fascinated by Kennedy and the promise of Camelot remains fascinated by his grisly end, leading to
Web. June 2012.
New York 320 (15
sec) the continuous stream of questions surrounding an alleged conspiracy, and security mistakes that combined to end the
Novem presidency of an elusive and enigmatic figure. We have no way of knowing how Kennedy would have responded to the
ber 22, events of the second half of the 1960s; we cannot presume his would-be response to ever-louder calls for equality; we
1963 cannot know whether he would have left Vietnam. The image of Camelot – and that’s what it was, an image, masterfully
crafted by none other than his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in the immediate aftermath of her husband’s
assassination – has taken a beating in the following decades as information about questionable morals, possible drug
abuse, and criminal illegality now surround Kennedy, but he remains one of the presidents in power during the heady
days of the Civil Rights Movement.
Kennedy’s assassination has become one of the touchstones in American lives. Just as countless Americans can recall
where they were when “we put a man on the moon,” they can recall where they were when they got the news that
Kennedy was slain.
Ironically, President Johnson, who was never able to command Kennedy’s popularity, though he was infinitely more
effective at accomplishing his domestic policy goals, forced through the very civil rights legislation that stalled under
Page 26 of 55
YouTube 5:02-5:04,
sec 302-304 (2 sec)
Fair Use
41.
YouTube 5:05-5:20,
sec 305-320 (15 sec)
Fair Use
42.
Kennedy. Johnson’s administration, however, became dominated by the debacle that was the Vietnam War and violent
race riots across the nation.
5:21-5:28
321-328
7sec
5:28-5:35
328-335
7sec
Less than an
hour’s drive from
Dallas where JFK
would breathe his
last breath in
1963,
YouTube 5:21-5:28,
Sec 321-328 (7 sec)
Narration: Carter
(continued)
Music: Scott P.
Schreer, BMI, “Soul
Longing,”
Freeplaymusic,
past the sign that YouTube 5:28-5:35,
hung in the rural Sec 328-335 (7 sec)
community of
Greenville from Narration: Carter
1921 until the late (continued)
1960s,
Music: Schreer
(continued)
YouTube 5:215:28, Sec 321328 (7 sec)
arcgis
YouTube YouTub YouTube 5:21-5:28, Sec 321-328 (7 sec)
5:21-5:28, e 5:21- To suggest the close proximity to this defining event—close in both time and space.
Sec 321- 5:28,
328 (7
Sec
sec)
321328 (7
Northeast sec)
Texas
1963
YouTube 5:28- YouTube YouTub YouTube 5:28-5:35, Sec 328-335 (7 sec)
5:35, Sec 328- 5:28-5:35, e 5:28335 (7 sec)
Sec 328- 5:35, Greenville is widely regarded by anyone who has heard of it as “that racist town.” To remedy this is the specific goals of
“Greenville Sign.” 335 (7
Sec
another counter public, established in 2001 as the Corporation for Cultural Diversity.
Huey, Brenda. sec)
328The Blackest
Greenville 335 (7 This sign hung over the rural town of Greenville Texas for approximately 40 years until the late 1960’s when protests
Land, the Whitest , TX
sec) from local citizens demanded the sign be removed. Because it hung on the busiest street in the city, Lee Street, directly
People:
between the train station and the bus station, travelers from across the country became aware of its existence.
Greenville, Texas.
1921
Obviously a provocative and racist slogan, city officials and community members claimed that the slogan referred to the
Bloomington, IN:
rich black soil of this Northeast Texas area known for its cotton production and the wholesome family values of the
AuthorHouse,
citizens. However, this area of the country was also well known for its deep rooted racism that was born in the cotton
2006.
plantations that relied upon slave labor since the eighteenth century.
YouTube 5:21-5:28,
Sec 321-328 (7 sec)
Fair Use
43.
YouTube 5:28-5:35,
Sec 328-335 (7 sec)
Fair Use
44.
YouTube 5:36-5:40,
sec 336-340 (4 sec)
Fair Use
45.
Youtube 5:40-5:44
Sec 340-344 (4 sec)
Fair Use
46.
The city of Greenville, TX, is, unfortunately, also well known for the brutal lynching that took place in the town square in
1908. Accused of assaulting a young woman, Ted Smith was taken from the custody of the local police by a mob that
beat him and burned him alive in the town square. The mob poured kerosene on him and created a bon fire using
boxes, barrels and kindling. At one point, they decided they needed more kindling for the fire so they passed a hat
around to raise $10 to purchase a cord of wood to add to the pyre. They burned Smith’s body until there was nothing
left but ashes.
Heuy, Brenda. The Blackest Land The Whitest People: Greenville, Texas. Bloomington: AuthorHouse, 2006.
5:35-5:40
5:40-5:44
340-344
4sec
ETSU students YouTube 5:36-5:39,
and local citizens sec 336-340 (3 sec)
felt the ripple of
social justice
Music: Schreer
continued
Narration: Carter
(continued)
YouTube 5:36- YouTube
5:40, sec 336-340 5:36-5:40,
(4 sec)
sec 336340 (4
sec)
just as profoundly Youtube 5:40-5:44
as they felt the Sec 340-344 (4 sec)
sting of Jim Crow.
Music: Schreer
(continued)
Youtube
Youtube 5:405:40-5:44
5:44 Sec 340-344 Sec 340(4 sec)
344 (4
Little Rock
sec)
YouTube 5:36-5:40, sec 336-340 (4 sec)
Here again we insist the audience explore this concept of communication about race and racism after the process of
desegregation began. One key area of concern is the violent response to the first students (often just children)
attempting to enter the schools after segregation was declared unconstitutional.
YouTub
e 5:365:40,
sec
336340 (4
sec)
Youtub
e 5:405:44
Sec
340-
Youtube 5:40-5:44 Sec 340-344 (4 sec)
In 1957, Dorothy Counts was one of the first African American students to enroll at Harding High School, a previously
segregated school in Charlotte, NC. White members of the community put up intense resistance towards the integration
of Dorothy and engaged in a verbal, physical and emotional assault on the fifteen year old girl that included threatening
Page 27 of 55
Central HS
Narration: Carter
(continued)
Charlotte,
North
Image:
Carolina
Associated Press Little
Rock,
“Little Rock
Arkansas
Central High
School.” Little
Rock, Arkansas.
Rally at State
Capitol--race
mixing is
communism
Dorothy Counts
5:44-5:47
344-347
3sec
Desegregation
changed
everything.
5:44-5:47 Sec 344-347
3sec
Seconds (start),
(end)
Minutes 5:47 (start),
5:52 end
Music: Schreer
continued
344 (4 phone calls to her family’s home. Encouraged by their parents, the students threw rocks at her, spit on her, called her
sec) names and ransacked her locker while the teachers simply ignored her. After four days of vicious harassment,
Dorothy’s parents withdrew her from the school in fear for her safety. Counts eventually moved to Pennsylvania where
Minutes she attended and integrated school in Philadelphia. It was this photograph of Counts that reached James Baldwin in
(start), Paris, France, that motivated him to return to the U.S. and become an active leader in the Civil Rights Movement.
end
Septem North Carolina is a predominately conservative state that became part of the focal point during the Civil Rights
ber
Movement in 1960 when Greensboro became one of the first cities to hold a sit-in at a lunch counter. Protesting Jim
4,1957 Crow Segregation, four African American students sat at the white’s only lunch counter and ordered coffee. They were
Septem refused and asked to leave but, the following day, an even larger crowd attended along with the local press. Sit-ins
ber
became part of the non-violent protest movement that eventually led to the desegregation of public spaces.
4,1957
“School
Dilemma—Youths
in Charlotte, N.C.
taunt Dorothy
Geraldine Counts,
15, as she walks
to enroll at the
previously allwhite Harding
High School.”
1957 Sept. 4.
Photograph.
Library of
Congress Prints
and Photographs
Division.
Washington DC.
LC-USZ62117236. Web.
Feb. 2012.
5:44-5:47 Sec
5:44-5:47
344-347
Sec 3443sec
347
3sec
5:44- 5:44-5:47 Sec 344-347
5:47 3sec
Sec
344- Seconds (start), (end)
347
Dorothy Counts
Seconds
3sec Minutes 5:47 (start), 5:52 end
Seconds (start),
(start),
(end)
(end)
Second Desegregation changed much of our nation, yet far too little. Dorothy Counts, in her attempt to attend Harding High
s
School in Charlotte, NC was harassed to the point of withdrawing from school. The community was against integration
Minutes 5:47
(start), 5:52 end Minutes (start), and met her with hostility, fear and hatred. One of the key community members who spoke out against Counts was the
5:47
(end) wife of John Z. Warlick, a member of the White Citizens Council. Mrs. Warlick encouraged the students to verbally and
(start),
emotionally assault Dorothy.
5:52 end Minutes
5:47 The White Citizens Council was a white supremacist organization that formed in 1954 in response to the law that
Charlotte, (start), forwarded desegregation, Brown vs. Board of Education. The leader of the organization was Robert B. Patterson, a
NC
5:52 former plantation manager who led a campaign using economic and political action against African American activists.
end
Tactics such as calling in mortgage loans, denying loans and credit and boycotting black owned businesses were
Septem commonly used by the group. Medgar Evers, an African American activist who sought to undermine the organization’s
ber
hostile actions by interviewing blacks who had been intimidated by it but, was ultimately assassinated by one of its
4,1957 members on June 12, 1963.
Page 28 of 55
Seconds (start),
(end)
Minutes 5:46 (start),
5:52 end
Fair Use
47.
5:47-5:52
347-352
5sec
Desegregation 5:47-5:51
changed nothing. 347-351 4 sec
Seconds (start),
(end)
347-351
Minutes 5:47
(start),5:52 end
Seconds (start),
(end)
Minutes 5:47
(start),5:52 end
Dorothy Counts
Music: Schreer
continued
5:52-6:19 5:54-5:57
652-679 354-357 3sec
27 sec
James Baldwin
(1963)
Seconds 353 (start), Seconds 353 (start), 379
379 (end)
(end)
Minutes 5:53
(start),6:19 end
Minutes 5:53 (start),6:19
end
“Take This Hammer”
(0:47-1:14). James
Baldwin. Sept. 24,
2011. Prod. KQED,
National Educational
Television (NET).
WNET. San Francisco
Bay Area Television
Archive. Web. March
2012.
“Take This Hammer” (0:471:14). James Baldwin. Sept.
24, 2011. Prod. KQED,
National Educational
Television (NET). WNET.
San Francisco Bay Area
Television Archive. Web.
March 2012.
Seconds
(start),
(end)347351
Second Seconds (start), (end)347-351
s
(start), Minutes 5:47 (start),5:52 end
(end)34
7-351 Desegregation ultimately changed very little if judged in terms of the ultimate eradication of racism in America. Racism
Minutes
persists nonetheless. In theory, Brown vs. Board of Education was a landmark win in the fight for civil rights. However,
5:47
Minutes just as the city of Charlotte, NC was resistant to integration; Little Rock, Arkansas was the focal point for a showdown
(start),5:5 5:47 between Governor Orval Faubus and President Dwight D. Eisenhower. In 1957, nine African American students
2 end
(start),5 attempted to enroll in Little Rock Senior High School. Escorted inside the building by local police, they were harassed
:52 end by a group of 1000 protestors. The protest escalated to the point where the police eventually removed the students
from the building, fearing for their lives.
Charlotte, Septem
NC
ber
The next day, President Eisenhower ordered 1200 troops from the 101st Airborne Division to escort the students into
4,1957 the school building. He also federalized the 10,000 troops of the Arkansas National Guard in order to remove them from
Governor Faubus’ control. Federal troops patrolled the inside and outside of the campus for the remainder of the year.
This event was an important moment in the implementation of Brown vs. Board of Education and the Civil Rights
Movement.
Seconds (start),
(end)
Seconds
353
(start),
379 (end)
Seconds 353 (start),
378 (end)
Second Seconds 353 (start), 379 (end)
s 353
(start), Minutes 5:53 (start),6:19 end
379
(end) We return to James Baldwin throughout the remix as his work offers a particularly vital framing for our key arguments.
Minutes
Race is a rhetorical construct that has very little (and ultimately everything) to do with the individuals involved. As
5:53
Minutes Powell notes decades later, the amazing thing about whiteness in a racist society is that an individual can benefit from
(start),6:1 5:53 (or suffer) the privileges of whiteness without being a racist himself.
9 end
(start),6
San
:19 end James Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer and social critic who wrote poetry,
Francisco, Spring novels, essays and plays that explore race, class, sex and social issues. Living in Brooklyn, NY, Baldwin realized that,
California 1963 as a writer, he needed to free himself from the social constraints imposed on him by American society. Seeking an
audience for his work that could view it beyond the context of “African American” he moved to Paris during the late
1940’s. There, he lived on the Left Bank among intellectuals, artists and writers who shared his ideology.
48.
Minutes 5:47
(start),5:52 end
Fair Use
49.
Minutes 5:53
(start),6:18 end
Fair Use
Although he lived in Paris for most of his life, he returned to the United States in 1957 after viewing the photograph of
Dorothy Counts as she attempted to attend school in Charlotte, NC. Once in the U.S., Baldwin aligned himself with the
Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Traveling the
country, he interviewed people across the nation and wrote several articles about the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963
he conducted a lecture tour for CORE, traveling across the Deep South to Louisiana and North Carolina.
Music: Schreer
continued
During the summer of 1963, in the midst of the Birmingham Riots, Baldwin met with Attorney General Robert F.
Kennedy, along with several black leaders and pressed him to take action and blamed the chaos in Birmingham and
Selma directly on the shoulders of the Director of the FBI J. Edgar Hoover and President Kennedy. He pointed to their
lack of action over the chaos and the violence that was occurring at the hands of white police officers.
6:19-6:38 6:22-6:24
379-398 382-384
19 sec
2sec
Sen. Robert F.
Kennedy
(1968)
Seconds 379 (start), Seconds 379 (start), 398
398 (end)
(end)
Minutes 6:19(start),
6:38 end
Minutes 6:19(start), 6:38
end
“Robert Kennedy
Announcing the
“Robert Kennedy
Assassination of Dr. Announcing the
Martin Luther King, Jr. Assassination of Dr. Martin
Seconds
379
(start),
398 (end)
Second Seconds 379 (start), 398 (end)
s 379
(start), Minutes 6:19(start), 6:38 end
398
(end) Senator Robert F. Kennedy (D-NY) was running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
Minutes
Kennedy, the younger brother of President Kennedy, had become famed for his civil rights work both in America and
6:19(start) Minutes around the world. In 1966, Kennedy traveled to South Africa, where he chided the Apartheid government for its racist
, 6:38 end 6:19(st
policies, while also speaking pointedly about the racial issues in the United States.
art),
6:38
Page 29 of 55
Seconds 379 (start),
397 (end)
Minutes 6:19(start),
6:37 end
Fair Use
50.
in Indiana 1968” (0:13- Luther King, Jr. in Indiana
0:18). YouTube. Nov. 1968” (0:13-0:18). YouTube.
13, 2009. Web. July Nov. 13, 2009. Web. July
2012.
2012.
Music: Schreer
continued
Indianapol end
Elected to serve in the Senate in 1966, Kennedy used the media interest that came with his name to highlight many of
is, Indiana
the same issues that concern King in his final years, namely the crisis of poverty and the unwinnable war in Vietnam.
April 4, Kennedy, unlike his brother, openly backed the modern Civil Rights Movement, and was scheduled to speak on the
1968
night of April 4, 1968, in Indianapolis, Indiana’s African American ghetto. Despite fears for his safety, Kennedy delivered
to the audience news of the civil rights leader’s slaying.
Day of Affirmation
http://www.rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/speechrfk.php
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp81OYCjXtU
Kennedy, Robert F. "Day of Affirmation Address." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library & Museum. 6 June 1966. Web.
July 2012. <http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Ready-Reference/RFK-Speeches/Day-of-Affirmation-Address-newsrelease-text-version.aspx>.
Shore, Larry. "Robert Kennedy's Speeches in South Africa." Speech. South Africa. 6-8 June 1966. RFK in the Land of
Apartheid: A Ripple of Hope. PBS, June 1966. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.rfksafilm.org/html/speeches/speechrfk.php>.
Andygw87. "Robert F. Kennedy - Day of Affirmation Speech [A Tiny Ripple of Hope]." YouTube. YouTube, 07 Jan.
2012. Web. July 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yp81OYCjXtU>.
6:38-6:49 6:42-6:46
398-409 402-406
11sec
4sec
“King is Dead”
(1968)
“Noise” continued Seconds 398 (start),
to challenge
409 (end)
meaningful
communication Minutes 6:38
across difference. (start),6:49 end
Narrator: Carter
continued
Music: Schreer
continued
Seconds 398 (start), 409
(end)
Minutes 6:38 (start),6:49
end
“King is Dead”
(1:45-1:49; 1:01-1:07).
Jimmie Mannas. 1968. A/V
Geeks Collection.
Archive.org. Web. June
2012.
Seconds
398
(start),
409 (end)
Second Martin Luther King, Jr., the iconic leader of the modern Civil Rights Movement, was assassinated on April 4, 1968, as
s 398 he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. In his final years, King had turned his attention
(start), from focusing solely on issues of political equality to questioning American imperialism and foreign policy, confronting
409
the evils of capitalism, and condemning American for being both the wealthiest nation in the world and a nation racked
(end)
by poverty.
Minutes
6:38
Minutes
(start),6:4 6:38 King was killed as he was leading the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to gain economic justice and fair housing. Like
9 end
(start),6 earlier campaigns, the Poor People’s Campaign was open to people of all races and ethnicities; leaders hoped to build
:49 end a multi-racial movement to force “an indifferent and unconcerned nation [to] rise from lethargy and subpoena its
conscious to appear before the judgment seat of morality” on the issue of poverty.
Harlem, 1968
New York
Though he preached that, “Negroes are still impoverished aliens in an affluent society,” King saw the problem of
American injustice as one that crossed racial lines, calling upon his fellow SCLC members to,
“honestly face the fact that the movement must address itself to the question of restricting the
whole or American society. There are forty million poor people here, and one day we must ask
the question, ‘Why are there forty million poor people in America?’ And when you begin to ask
that question, you are raising a question about the economic system, about a broader
distribution of wealth…you begin to question the capitalistic economy…we must come to see
that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring…”
The death of King led to riots in more than 100 cities across the country, and 1968 became one of the most turbulent
years in American history.
MLK Final Crusade
Poor People's Campaign
Ill-Fated Second Phase of the Civil Rights Movement
Page 30 of 55
Seconds 398 (start),
409 (end)
Minutes 6:38
(start),6:49 end
Public Domain
51.
Dissident Voice
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm
Where Do We Go From Here?
Blake, John. "King's Final Crusade: The Radical Push for a New America." CNN. Cable News Network, 29 Dec.
2008. Web. 26 July 2012. <http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/01/mlk.final.crusade/>.
"The Poor People's Campaign." The Poor People's Campaign. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.poorpeoplescampaignppc.org/>.
To All Souls. "The Ill Fated Second Phase of the Civil Rights Struggle." Web log post.To All Souls. Blogger.com, 8
Apr. 2007. Web. July 2012. <http://toallsouls.blogspot.com/2007/04/ill-fated-second-phase-of-civil-rights.html>.
Cohen, Jeff, and Norman Solomon. "The Martin Luther King You Don't See on TV."Dissidentvoice.org. Dissident
Voice, 5 Apr. 2007. Web. July 2012. <http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Apr07/Cohen-Solomon05.htm>.
King, Jr., Martin Luther. "A Time to Break Silence." A Time to Break Silence: By Rev. Martin Luther King.
Information Clearing House, 4 Apr. 1967. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article2564.htm>.
King, Jr., Martin Luther. "Where Do We Go From Here?" Speech. 11th Annual SCLC Convention. Atlanta, GA. 16
Aug. 1967. The Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. Stanford University, Aug. 1967. Web.
July 2012. <http://mlkkpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/where_do_we_go_from_here_delivered_at_the_11th_ann
ual_sclc_convention>.
6:50-7:00
410-420
10sec
“A Communications
Primer” (1953))
Seconds 410 (start), Seconds 410 (start), 420
420 (end)
(end)
Minutes 6:50
(start),7:00 end
Minutes 6:50 (start),7:00
end
A Communications Primer
A Communications
(2:39-2:50).
Primer (2:39-2:50).
Charles Eames. 1953. IBM.
Charles Eames. 1953. Prelinger Archives.
IBM. Prelinger
Archive.org. Web. June.
Archives. Archive.org. 2012.
Web. June. 2012.
Seconds
410
(start),
420 (end)
Second Seconds 410 (start), 420 (end)
s 410
(start), Minutes 6:50 (start),7:00 end
420
(end) We return here and throughout to this notion of noise.
Minutes
6:50
Minutes
(start),7:0 6:50
0 end
(start),7
:00
USA
end
Seconds 410 (start),
420 (end)
52.
Minutes 6:50
(start),7:00 end
Public Domain
1953
Music: Schreer
continued
7:00-7:10 7:02-7:05
420-430 422-425
10sec
3sec
Rivers of Blood
(1968)
Noise from the
past and fear
about our very
futures distorted
signals
transmitted from
all sides.
Seconds 420 (start), 430
Seconds 420 (start), (end)
429 (end)
Minutes 7:00 (start),7:10
Minutes 7:00
end
(start),7:07 end
“Rivers of Blood” (3:08-3:10;
Narration: Carter
3:11-3:17). White. BBC.
continued
2008.
Music: Schreer
continued
Seconds
420
(start),
430 (end)
Second Seconds 420 (start), 430 (end)
s 420
(start), Minutes 7:00 (start),7:10 end
430
(end) John Enoch Powell, MBE, was a British politician who served as a Member of Parliament from 1950 through 1987. He
Minutes
is most famed for his Rivers of Blood speech, where he famously spoke against immigration from the United Kingdom’s
7:00
Minutes former colonies to the UK.
(start),7:1 7:00
0 end
(start),7
Powell delivered the speech in a hotel in Birmingham, to a meeting of the Conservative Political Centre, on April 20,
Birmingha :10
1968, in opposition to the Race Relations Act 1968, which itself made illegal the refusal of public services to a person
m,
end
England, April on the grounds of color, race, ethnic or national origins. The Act served to amend the Race Relations Act of 1965,
Page 31 of 55
Seconds 420 (start),
430 (end)
Minutes 7:00
(start),7:10 end
Fair Use
53.
UK
20,
1963
which forbade discrimination on the grounds of color, race, or ethnic or national origins in public places.
In it, Powell highlighted the difficulty in a nation adapting to meet the needs of all of its citizens, including its new
residents, and argued for curbs on immigration, especially of children and the unwed. The Conservative Party removed
Powell from the Shadow Cabinet and publicly distanced themselves from him, while many white Britons openly and
privately agreed with his speech.
Text of Speech
Press Reaction to Powell
BBC Rivers of Blood
Powell, Enoch. "'Rivers of Blood' Speech." Speech. Conservative Association Meeting. UK, Birmingham. 20 Apr.
1968. The Telegraph. 6 Nov. 2007. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/3643823/Enoch- Powells-Rivers-of-Blood-speech.html>.
Sterling Times. "Rivers of Blood Speeches by Enoch Powell." Press Reaction to Powell. Sterling Times: the Virtual
Scrapbook of British Nostalgia, 22 Apr. 1968. Web. July 2012. <http://www.sterlingtimes.co.uk/powell_press.htm>.
BBC News. "Rivers of Blood, The Real Source." 1968 - Myth or Reality? BBC News, Mar. 2008. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/1968/riversofblood.shtml>.
7:10-7:13
430-433
3sec
Seconds 430 (start), Seconds 430 (start), 439
439 (end)
(end)
Minutes7:10 (start),
7:19 end
Minutes7:10 (start), 7:19
end
Music: Schreer
continued
“Rivers of Blood” (3:293:38). White. BBC. 2008.
Or
“Dark Immigrants” (1968).
Seconds 430 (start), 439 (end)
Minutes7:10 (start), 7:19 end
In 1948, the British Nationality Act gave British nationality to all people living in the Commonwealth, along with full rights
of settlement and residency in Britain. Many from the Caribbean were attracted to the higher standard of living in the
“mother country” and duly immigrated. Britain, however, was traditionally a nation of emigrants, and was facing, for the
first time, immigration by large numbers of non-whites, who did not blend as easily with the overwhelming white British
population.
Parliament recognized the racial issues developing in the nation and passed the Commonwealth Immigrants Act of
1962 that restricted immigration, and later further restricted immigration to those who held work permits. Despite limiting
the number of immigrants who could settle from its Commonwealth, Britain did little to integrate these new Britons into
society. Black Britons were effectively consigned to the ghettoes of major English cities, and racial tolerance in certain
areas of the United Kingdom, especially Northern Ireland which boasts a non-white population of a mere .66%, remains
an issue.
BBC, prod. 1976: White Rule in Rhodesia to End. On This Day. BBC, 24 Sept. 1976. Web. July 2012.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/24/newsid_2537000/2537969.stm>.
Smith, Ian. "Unilateral Declaration of Independence." Speech. Rhodesia. BBC. 11 Nov. 1965. Web. July 2012.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/710000/audio/_711975_udi1965.ram>.
Regclarke. "Ian Smith - A Bit of a Rebel." YouTube. YouTube, 16 Mar. 2007. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_x9jRYU1JU>.
Page 32 of 55
Seconds 430 (start),
433 (end)
Minutes7:10 (start),
7:19 end
Fair Use
54.
7:14-7:20 7:14-7:20
434-440 434-440
6sec
6sec
“…the black man will
have the whip hand
over the white man.”
Enoch Powell,
(1968)
Seconds 430 (start), Seconds 430 (start), 439
439 (end)
(end)
Minutes7:10 (start),
7:19 end
Minutes7:10 (start), 7:19
end
Music: Schreer
continued
“Rivers of Blood” (4:004:09). White. BBC. 2008.
Seconds
430
(start),
439 (end)
Second Seconds 430 (start), 439 (end)
s 430
(start), Minutes7:10 (start), 7:19 end
439
Ian Smith served as a politician in Southern Rhodesia (modern Zimbabwe), who opposed black majority rule. In 1962,
(end) the United Kingdom was exiting its’ colonial empire and granting its colonies their independence. Mindful of the
Minutes7:
nightmare enveloping its former colony of South Africa, the British government, however, insisted on black majority rule
10 (start), Minutes
before independence would be granted.
7:19 end 7:10
(start),
Birmingha 7:19 In April 1964, Smith became Southern Rhodesia’s Prime Minister, and began his war of words with the United
Kingdom, which continued to refuse to grant the country its independence until a black majority rule government was
m,
end
installed. On November 11, 1965, Smith and his Cabinet issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (itself
England,
UK
Apr 20, modeled on America’s Declaration of Independence), which was duly unrecognized by the United Kingdom.
1968
Seconds 430 (start),
439 (end)
55.
Minutes7:10 (start),
7:19 end
Fair Use
The country descended into a civil war, known as the Rhodesian Bush War, as two black national movements, namely
the Zimbabwe African National Union and the Zimbabwe African People’s Union, fought each other and the Rhodesian
government. The Bush War lasted until December 1979, when the British government, Rhodesian government, and the
Patriotic Front, a unity group of the African nationalist movements, agreed to hold free and fair elections in March 1980.
Bibliography
On This Day
UDI
A Bit of a Rebel
JimmyGB. "Enoch Powell - Rivers of Blood Part 1." YouTube. YouTube, 25 Mar. 2008. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HP7fETsKYkA>.
7:20-728 7:26-7:28
440-448 440-448
8sec
8sec
Sen. Robert F.
Kennedy
(1968)
Seconds 442 (start), Seconds 444 (start), 448
448 (end)
(end)
Minutes 7:22
(start),7:28 end
Minutes 7:24 (start),7:28
end
“The Shooting of RFK”
(0:53-1:00). ABC
“The Shooting of RFK”
News. Patak,
(0:53-1:00). ABC
Manpowerwedfilms.
YouTube. April 14,
2011. Web. Retrieved
June 2012.
Music: Schreer
continued
7:28-7:34
448-454
6sec
Seconds 448 (start),
454 end
Seconds 448 (start), 454
end
Minutes 7:28 (start), Minutes 7:28 (start), 7:34
7:34 (end)
(end)
“The Shooting of RFK”
“The Shooting of RFK” (1:20-1:27; 1:28-1:34). ABC
(0:53-1:00). ABC
News. Patak,
News. Patak,
Manpowerwedfilms.
Seconds 440
Seconds Second Seconds 440 (start), 448 (end)
(start), 444 (end) 440
s 440
(start),
(start), Minutes 7:20 (start),7:28 end
Minutes 7:20
448 (end) 448
(start),7:24 end
(end) Senator Kennedy’s participation in this tour and related moments have been described as of concern for many
Minutes
Americans, particularly those most in support of segregation.
RFK tour
7:20
Minutes
Image over audio (start),7:2 7:20
till 7:24
8 end
(start),7 Bibliography
:28 end http://republicanracism.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-did-blacks-become-democrats-and.html
Seconds 440 (start),
448 (end)
56.
Minutes 7:20
(start),7:28 end
Fair Use
Kentucky Februar Phillips, Michael. "How Did African Americans Become Democrats and Republicans Racists? Part II."
y 13Web log post. The Internet Republican Racism Database. Blogspot.com, 27 Jan. 2012. Web. July 2012.
14,
<http://republicanracism.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-did-blacks-become-democrats-and.html>.
1968
LyfeMmhMaphosa. "Zimbabwe - Smith Comment on Black Majority Rule 1966.VOB." YouTube.
YouTube, 22 Apr. 2010. Web. July 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4CKgjHjZYc>.
Seconds
448
(start),
454 end
Second Seconds 448 (start), 454 end
s 448
(start), Minutes 7:28 (start), 7:34 (end)
454
end
We draw forward a series of terrible moments like the assassination of Robert Kennedy just months after the
Minutes
assassination of Martin Luther King. As the commentator says, “Is that possible?” 1968 will go down in history as a year
7:28
Minutes of almost unprecedented tragedy.
(start),
7:28
7:34 (end) (start), Robert F. Kennedy (RFK) was the brother to President John F. Kennedy and served under him as the U.S. Attorney
7:34 General from 1961 – 1964. Nine months after his brother’s assassination in November 1963, RFK resigned from his
Page 33 of 55
Seconds 448 (start),
454 end
Minutes 7:28 (start),
7:34 (end)
57.
Popcorn
Ian Smith
entirely
Ian Smith
on Black
Majority
Rule
Manpowerwedfilms. YouTube. April 14, 2011.
YouTube. April 14,
Web. Retrieved June 2012.
2011. Web. Retrieved
June 2012.
Music: Schreer
continued
Los
(end) position. Soon after, he became the U.S. Senator for the state of New York.
Angeles, June 5,
CA
1968 As an activist in the Civil Rights movement, RFK went on national and international speaking tours. One of his most
famous speeches occurred in South Africa, in 1966, where the country was embroiled in apartheid. He gave an earth
shaking speech to college students at the University of Cape Town where he said, “Each time a man stands up for an
ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope…”
He was in South Africa for five days, where he met activists and expressed his support. The South African
government felt forced to allow RFK in to their nation as they “didn’t want to have a bad relationship,” with him if he was
to become the next President of the United States of America.
In 1968, Senator Kennedy went on his infamous “poverty tour,” spanning for 200 miles in southeastern Kentucky. He
traveled around to homes, businesses, and schools to research Americans undergoing poverty. Later, Presidents
Nixon and Clinton would travel to Eastern Kentucky, yet the locals still believe that RFK’s visit gave them the most hope
from any politician.
In the mid-1960s, Kennedy began his campaign for the Democratic nomination. His platform held a variety of views
popular to many of those who would turn to violent protests after his assassination. One of those was his staunch antiVietnam War stand. RFK was able to obtain many of the support that had been with his brother eight year prior to his
announcement that he would campaign. His popularity sent President Johnson into questioning his re-election bid to
the point that he dropped out of the race entirely.
Norris, Michele. "Remembering RFK's Visit To 'The Land Of Apartheid'" Audio blog post. NPR News. National Public
Radio, 12 Aug. 2011. Web. July 2012. <http://www.npr.org/2011/08/12/139449268/remembering-rfks-visit-to-the-landof-apartheid>.
Bibliography
Clarke, Thurston. "The Last Good Campaign." Vanityfair.com. Vanity Fair, June 2008. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/06/rfk_excerpt200806>.
LyfeMmh Maphosa. "Zimbabwe - Smith Comment on Black Majority Rule 1966.VOB." YouTube.
YouTube, 22 Apr. 2010. Web. July 2012. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k4CKgjHjZYc>.
RFK in EKY. "RFK in EKY: About Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 Tour." The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project. N.p.
n.d. Web. July 2012. <http://www.rfkineky.org/project/1968-tour.htm>.
7:34-7:40 7:34-7:40
454-460 454-460
6sec
6sec
“Civility functions to
hold in check
agitation against a
social order that is
undemocratic in
access to decision
making power and
unequal in
distribution of
wealth.”
Nancy Welch
(2012)
Seconds 454 (start),
460 (end)
Minutes
7:34(start),7:40 end
Music: Schreer
continued
Seconds
454
(start),
460 (end)
Minutes
7:34(start)
,7:40 end
USA
Seconds 454 (start), 460 (end)
Minutes 7:34(start),7:40 end
As Nancy Welch explains, “Civility functions to hold in check agitation against a social order that is undemocratic in
access to decision making power and unequal in distribution of wealth.” We return throughout to this notion of “civility”
as we unpack similar sentiments throughout history. In 1852, for example, in Fredrick Douglas’s speech to hall, for July
4th.
(2012)
Bibliography
Welch, Nancy. “Informed, Passionate, and Disorderly: Uncivil Rhetoric in a New Gilded Age.” Special
Issue on “Writing Democracy.” Shannon Carter and Deborah Mutnick, Guest Editors. CLJ (September
2012), forthcoming. Print.
Page 34 of 55
58.
7:41-7:46
461-466
5sec
Seconds 461
(start),466 (end)
Seconds 461 (start),466
(end)
Minutes
7:41(start),746 end
Minutes 7:41(start),746 end
Seconds
461
(start),466
(end)
“The Shooting of RFK”
Music: Schreer ENDS (1:27-1:34). ABC News.
AT 7:46
Patak, Manpowerwedfilms.
YouTube. April 14, 2011.
Web. Retrieved June 2012.
Seconds 461 (start),471 (end)
Minutes 7:66(start),746 end
It is difficult to overstate the role played by these terrible tragedies in any attempt to communicate across difference in
1968 and the surrounding years
On June 5, 1968, Robert F. Kennedy won the California Democratic Primary. On his way out of the hotel, he was shot
in the head by a Palestinian extremist Sirhan Sirhan.1 RFK’s body was transported by train to Washington D.C., on
June 8, 1968 after his funeral in New York. Approximately a million Americans lined the tracks to show their respect for
the fallen leader. Many mourned his death, and by the showing of those who lined the tracks from New York to
Washington, RFK’s death meant a great deal to supporters and civil rights activists.2
Minutes
7:41(start)
,746 end
Los
Angeles,
CA
Seconds 461
(start),466 (end)
59.
Minutes
7:41(start),746 end
Fair Use
Overall, RFK was a symbol to many who had desired change on the issue of civil rights. Not only did he fight
internationally, but he did also nationally. He would ally with Martin Luther King Jr. in the eyes of my in the fight for Civil
Rights. King applauded Kennedy’s anti-war rhetoric and found Kennedy as a voice of reason in the tumultuous 1960s.
RFK stood as a symbol for peace and unity during a violent era of American history. It was after the assassination of
this iconic civil rights/peace symbol that lead to the events at the Democratic National Convention, and the chaos that
followed. With witnessing RFK’s popularity, and coming off of his brother’s legacy, many wonder if he could have
defeated Nixon and what would the world have been like under a President Robert F. Kennedy.
National Public Radio, 12 Aug. 2011. Web. July 2012. <http://www.npr.org/2011/08/12/139449268/remembering-rfksvisit-to-the-land-of-apartheid>.
RFK in EKY. "RFK in EKY: About Robert F. Kennedy's 1968 Tour." The Robert F. Kennedy Performance Project. N.p.
, n.d. Web. July 2012. <http://www.rfkineky.org/project/1968-tour.htm>.
Clarke, Thurston. "The Last Good Campaign." Vanityfair.com. Vanity Fair, June 2008. Web. July 2012.
<http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/06/rfk_excerpt200806>.
7:47-8:18
467-498
31 sec
In 1968, noise
Seconds (start),
filled the airwaves (end)
around the world.
Everything we
Minutes 7(start), end
thought we knew
about ourselves Narration
and one another
seemed to
unravel with the Music: Derek R.
assassinations of Audette, “Creepy
MLK and Bobby Egypt,”
Kennedy and riots http://derekaudette.ott
in major cities
awaarts.com/music_b
around the globe. umper.php
Campus unrest
everywhere hit a Betty Fykes, “If You
Seconds (start), (end)
Minutes (start), end
7:47-7:49
467-469
CBS Reports 1968 pt. 1
Newscenter WJW
0:10 – 0:12
4:49-7:50
469-470
Rivers of Blood pt 1
“Rivers of Blood” (1:33-1:34
). White. BBC. 2008.
8:14-8:18
S-
196
8
The year 1968 was a chaotic and extraordinarily turbulent period in history. Violence erupted across the nation as antiwar protests escalated across college campuses. The nightly news footage of the mounting American deaths and the
7:47
seemingly endless war in Vietnam caused growing outrage and a call for peace. Violence defined this year when in
Washingto
February, the North Vietnamese began the Tet Offensive and soon after, the front page of the New York Times
n DC
published a photograph showing the execution of a Vietcong prisoner of war by a South Vietnamese official created
shockwaves around the world and caused Americans to question everything they had previously believed about their
allies, the South Vietnamese. Further enraging the nation, one month later, the My Lai massacre occurred in which
April hundreds of innocent women, children and elderly Vietnamese were murdered by American troops. This event was a
7:49
196 watershed moment in the history of the war when it became clear that the war was completely out of the of control of
Birmingha 8
American officials.
m,
England
One month later, towards the end of March, Martin L. King Jr. led a march in Memphis, Tennessee that turned violent
UK
when a 16 year old African American boy was killed while 60 people were injured and over 150 were arrested. Less
than one week later, on April the 4th, King was assassinated at the Lorraine Hotel where he was planning the Poor
People’s March on Washington.
60.
Clarke, Thurston. "The Last Good Campaign." Vanityfair.com. Vanity Fair, June 2008. Web. July 2012. <http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/06/rfk_excerpt200806>.
Stevenson, James. "R.F.K., R.I.P., Revisited." The New York Times. The New York Times, 01 June 2008. Web. July 2012. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/magazine/01RFKtextt.html?_r=1>.
1
2
Page 35 of 55
crescendo as
losses suffered in
Vietnam became
increasingly
intolerable and
the promises of
civil rights
legislation
appeared
increasingly
unlikely.
Miss Me from the Back 7:50-7:51
of the Bus,” Bernice 470-471
Johnson Reagon,
CBS Reports 1968 pt 1
1997.
“CBS Reports: 1968” (0:140:15). Newscenter WJW
Cleveland. Dec. 22, 1993.
YouTube. Jan. 17, 2010.
Web. June 2012
7:51-7:54
471-474
Black Panthers
1968. Prod. Agnes Varda
(French). Community Video.
Archive.org. Web. July
2012.
7:54-7:56
474-476
“CBS Reports: 1968” (0:160:18). Newscenter WJW
Cleveland. Dec. 22, 1993.
YouTube. Jan. 17, 2010.
Web. June 2012
7:56-7:57
476-477
“Rivers of Blood” (1:331:34). White. BBC. 2008.
Rivers of Blood pt 1
7:58-8:02
478-482
“Black Panthers.” 1968.
Prod. Agnes Varda
(French). Community Video.
Archive.org. Web. July
2012.
8:02-8:03
482-483
CBS Reports 1968 pt 1
“CBS Reports: 1968” (0:240:26). Newscenter WJW
Cleveland. Dec. 22, 1993.
YouTube. Jan. 17, 2010.
Web. June 2012.
8:04-8:05
484-485
Rivers of Blood pt 1
1:39-1:40
“Rivers of Blood” (1:391:40). White. BBC. 2008.
8:05-8:07
485-487
7:51
Chicago,
Illinois
7:52
Oakland,
CA
April
4-6,
196
8
That evening, as Robert F. Kennedy, who had recently announced his plans to run for President, was about to deliver a
speech in Indianapolis, IN, was informed of King’s assassination. He gave an impromptu eulogy for Dr. King and called
for reconciliation and unity. However, when the rest of the nation heard of King’s death, riots broke out in Baltimore,
Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Kansas City, Newark, Washington D.C. and many other cities.
Towards the end of April, students at Columbia University staged a protest where they occupied five university
buildings for seven days. The students were protesting the university’s connections to the Institute for Defense Analysis
as well as a segregated gymnasium that was proposed to be constructed in Morningside Park. On the seventh day of
the occupation, the police stormed the buildings and forcibly removed the students. Approximately 150 students were
injured and taken to hospitals and more than 700 arrests were made.
In May, protests in Paris, France erupted as tens of thousands of protestors filled the city streets. The Wild cat strikes
involved over 11 million workers and brought the nation to a near standstill. “Bloody Monday” marked one of the most
April violent days of that month when 5000 students marched through the Latin Quarter and riots broke out between the
Baltimore, 6protestors and the police. These student’s protests nearly brought down the de Gaulle administration as they
Maryland 14, challenged the balance of power.
196
8
The following month, Robert Kennedy was assassinated at the Ambassador Hotel in San Francisco after giving a
campaign speech. Tensions across the nation were at an all-time high when the Democrats held their National
Convention in Chicago during August. Demonstrations outside of the convention were peaceful for the first two days
and then violence broke out when the police, under the direction of Mayor Daley, began assaulting protestors, beating
many unconscious and sending over 100 to the emergency room.
7:54
Just two weeks before the Summer Olympic Games in October, student protests in Mexico City led to hundreds of
deaths. Known as the Tlatelolco Massacre, the protestors challenged the political regime that had suppressed labor
unions, farmers and workers. The regime’s response to the peaceful protests was to bring in Mexican troops with
helicopters and snipers on rooftops to shut down the protests. Their goal was to quiet the “noise” of the country so as to
create a peaceful appearance to the rest of the world during the Olympic Games. The noise of the Tlatelolco Massacre
was soon overshadowed by the voices of Tommie Smith and John Carlos who raised their black clad fists in the Black
Power Salute in solidarity with African Americans back home. They were sent home by their U.S. coach and criticized
for bringing politics into the Olympics. However, as the IOC President, Avery Brundage criticized the black athletes for
standing for human rights, he deemed this type of rhetorical action acceptable during the 1936 Olympics when African
American Gold Medal winner Jesse Owens stood on the platform next to a German giving the Nazi salute.
Bibliography
Alabama Journal. "œTo the Montgomery Public." The Martin Luther King, Jr Research and Education Institute. Stanford
University. Web. July 2012. <http://mlkkpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/to_the_montgomery_public/>.
"Columbia Crisis -- Digitization Policy and Image Samples." History in the New Media. Wikidot.com, 25 Feb. 2009.
Web. July 2012. <http://historynewmedia.wikidot.com/columbia-crisis-digitization>.
Cruz, Frank Da. "Columbia University 1968." Columbia University 1968. Columbia University, Jan. 2008. Web. July
2012. <http://www.columbia.edu/cu/computinghistory/1968/68-r1.html>.
"Murder in the Name of War - My Lai." BBC News World Edition. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Aug. 2012.
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/64344.stm>.
Striking Columbis Students. Our Demand: Columbia University. Digital Image. Columbia Crisis. Digitization Policy and
Image Samples. Columbia University Archives, 1968. Web. July 2012
Wood, Linda, Sharon Schmid, and David Reville. "1968: A Timeline of Events." 1968: A Timeline of Events. Brown
Page 36 of 55
CBS Reports 1968 pt 1
0:36-0:38
University, n.d. Web. 03 Aug. 2012. <http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/1968/reference/timeline.html>.
8:08-8:12
488-492
“Black Panthers.” 1968.
Prod. Agnes Varda
(French). Community Video.
Archive.org. Web. July
2012.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1968_Chicago_riots
8:12-8:13
“CBS Reports: 1968” (0:420:43). Newscenter WJW
Cleveland. Dec. 22, 1993.
YouTube. Jan. 17, 2010.
Web. June 2012
CBS Reports 1968 pt 1
8:14-8:18
Our Demands: Columbia
University
______________________________________
____
8:19
499-528
8:22-8:24
502-504
Mexico City
(1968)
8:48-8:52 Seconds (start )
528-532 528, (end) 532
Minutes (start), 8:48
end 8:52
In 1968, at the Seconds (start)500,
Mexico City
(end) 516
Olympics,
sprinters John
Minutes (start), 8:20
Carlos and
end8:36
Tommie Smith
called global
Music: Original –
attention to the Adam Sparks, Garage
persistence of
Band/Final Cut
racism by taking Express, 2012
full advantage of
the means of
persuasion
available to them
as black athletes
representing the
nation to the
world.
Avery B. “They do Seconds (start ) 528,
not understand...” (end) 532
Minutes (start), 8:48
end 8:52
Mexican TV News
1:16 – 1:32
And 1:36-1:49
Seconds (start) 499,
(end)528
Minutes (start) 8:19, end
8:48
“Mexico 68 Olympiads
‘Black Power” (1:16-1:32;
1:36-1:49). Mexican TV
News. YouTube. Sep. 14,
2008. Web. June 2012.
Seconds (start ) 528, (end)
532
Minutes (start), 8:48 end
8:52
Seconds
(start)
499,
(end)528
Second Seconds (start) 499, (end)528
s
(start) Minutes (start) 8:19, end 8:48
499,
(end)52 Bibliography
Minutes 8
(start)
Shannon
8:19, end Minutes
8:48
(start)
8:19,
Mexico end
City
8:48
Seconds (start) 499,
(end)528
61.
Minutes (start) 8:19,
end 8:48
October
16,
1968
Seconds Second Seconds (start ) 528, (end) 532
(start )
s (start
528, (end) ) 528, Minutes (start), 8:48 end 8:52
532
(end)
532
Bibliography
Minutes
Shannon
Page 37 of 55
Seconds (start),
(end)
Minutes (start), end
62.
.
Avery Brundage
President,
International
Olympic Committee
(1952-1972)
8:53-8:56
533-536
(start),
Minutes
8:48 end (start),
8:52
8:48
end
Lausanne, 8:52
Switzerlan
d
19361972
Seconds (start) 533, Seconds (start) 533, (end) Seconds (start) Seconds Second Seconds (start) 533, (end) 536
(end) 536
536
533, (end) 536 (start)
s
533, (end) (start) Minutes (start) 8:53, end 8:56
Minutes (start) 8:53, Minutes (start) 8:53, end
Minutes (start)
536
533,
end 8:56
8:56
8:53, end 8:56
(end) "I remember seeing Hitler coming in with his entourage and the storm troopers standing shoulder to shoulder like an
Minutes 536
iron fence," Owens said about Germany's leader entering Olympic Stadium. "Then came the roar of 'Heil, Hitler!' from
Music: Robert Mann, “Mexico 68 Olympiads
Jesse Owens
(start)
100,000 throats. And all those arms outstretched. It was eerie and frightening."
“Elevate,”
‘Black Power” (14:13-14:18).
8:53, end Minutes
Freeplaymusic
Mexican TV News.
8:56
(start) "When I came back to my native country, after all the stories about Hitler, I couldn't ride in the front of the bus," Owens
www.freeplaymusic.co YouTube. Sep. 14, 2008.
8:53, said. "I had to go to the back door. I couldn't live where I wanted. I wasn't invited to shake hands with Hitler, but I wasn't
m
Web. June 2012.
Berlin,
end
invited to the White House to shake hands with the President, either."
Germany 8:56
8:56-8:58
536-538
1936
A Communications Primer
"The Americans should be ashamed of themselves, letting Negroes win their medals for them. I shall not shake
hands with this Negro.......do you really think that I will allow myself to be photographed shaking hands with a
Negro?"
“Mexico 68 Olympiads
‘Black Power” (14:13-14:18).
Mexican TV News.
YouTube. Sep. 14, 2008.
Web. June 2012.
Four years later in his 1972 book I Have Changed, he moderated his opinion:
I realized now that militancy in the best sense of the word was the only answer where the black man was concerned,
that any black man who wasn't a militant in 1970 was either blind or a coward.
Bibliography
http://espn.go.com/classic/biography/s/Owens_Jesse.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/01/arts/television/jesse-owens-on-pbss-american-experience.html
http://www.historylearningsite.co.uk/1936_berlin_olympics.htm
Zirin, Dave. "After Forty-four Years, It's Time Brent Musburger Apologized to John Carlos and Tommie
Smith." The Nation. 4 June 2012. Web. 24 July 2012. <http://www.thenation.com/blog/168209/afterforty-four-years-its-time-brent-musburger-apologized-john-carlos-and-tommie-smith>.
"Brent Musburger." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 22 July 2012. Web. July 2012.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Musburger>.
Davis, David. "Olympic Athletes Who Took a Stand." Smithsonian.com. Smithsonian Institution, Aug.
2008. Web. July 2012. <http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/indelible-olympics200808.html>.
Petchesky, Barry. "Should Brent Musburger Apologize For Calling John Carlos And Tommie Smith
"Black-Skinned Storm Troopers" 44 Years Ago?"Deadspin.com. Gawker Media, 6 June 2012. Web. July
2012. <http://deadspin.com/5916321/should-brent-musburger-apologize-for-calling-john-carlos-andtommie-smith-black skinned-storm-troopers-44-years-ago>.
Page 38 of 55
Seconds (start) 533,
(end) 536
Minutes (start) 8:53,
end 8:56
63.
8:57-9:14 9:00-9:02
537-554 540-542
British Broadcasting
Company
(1968)
Seconds (start) 537, Seconds (start) 537, (end)
(end) 554
554
Minutes (start) 8:57,
end 9:14
Seconds Second Seconds (start) 537, (end) 554
(start)
s
537, (end) (start) Minutes (start) 8:57, end 9:14
554
537,
(end) Shannon
Minutes 554
(start)
Bibliography
8:57, end Minutes
9:14
(start) "The Olympics: Black Complaint." Time 25 Oct. 1968: 62-63. Print.
8:57,
Mexico end
City
9:14
Minutes (start) 8:57, end
9:14
Music: Robert Mann, “Mexico 68 Olimpiadas
“Elevate,”
‘Black Power” (41:53-42:10).
Freeplaymusic
Mexican TV News.
www.freeplaymusic.co YouTube. Sep. 14, 2008.
m
Web. June 2012.
9:12-9:14
552-554
A Communications Primer
9:14-9:16
554-556
continued
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Seconds (start) 537,
(end) 554
64.
Minutes (start) 8:57,
end 9:14
October
16,
1968
9:14-9:16
554-556
Jesse Owens
9:14-9:16 9:14554-556 9:16
554Berlin,
556
German
1936
9:14-9:16
554-556
9:14-9:16
554-556
65.
Seconds (start) 556,
(end)559
66.
Shannon
Bibliography
Moore, Kenny. "A Courageous Stand." Sport Illustrated 5 Aug. 1991: 64-81. SI Vault.
Sportsillustrated.cnn.com/. Web. July 2012.
<http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/vault/article/magazine/MAG1139998/2/index.htm>.
9:16-9:16
556-559
9:20-9:27
560-567
continued
Seconds (start) 556,
Music: Robert Mann, (end)559
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
Minutes (start) 9:16, end
www.freeplaymusic.co 9:19
m
“Mexico 68 Olimpiadas
‘Black Power” (40:00-40:04).
Mexican TV News.
YouTube. Sep. 14, 2008.
Web. June 2012.
The world was
watching. The
message they
tried to transmit
through that
global channel
was one of black
resistance.
Seconds (start) 560,
(end) 567
Minutes (start 9:209:27)
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
Take This Hammer. Dir. Orville Luster. Perf. James Baldwin. KQED News, 1963. Film. San Francisco Bay
Area Television Archive. San Francisco State University, 24 Sept. 2011. Web. Mar. 2012.
<https://diva.sfsu.edu/bundles/187041>.
Seconds Second Seconds (start) 556, (end)559
(start)
s
556,
(start) Minutes (start) 9:16, end 9:19
(end)559 556,
(end)55 How long was he racing horses
Minutes 9
(start)
Shannon
9:16, end Minutes
9:19
(start) Bibliography
9:16,
USA
end
Antihostile. "Malcolm X: By Any Means Necessary." YouTube. YouTube, 15 Apr. 2010. Web. July 2012.
9:19
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhg6LxyTnY8>.
19461972
Seconds (start) Seconds Second Seconds (start) 560, (end) 567
560, (end) 567 (start)
s
560, (end) (start) Minutes (start 9:20-9:27)
Minutes (start
567
560,
9:20-9:27)
(end) Shannon
Minutes 567
original
(start
That single iconic image of two African Americans, black-gloved fists raised and heads bowed as the national anthem
9:20-9:27) Minutes played and millions booed, remains indelibly etched in our collective memory. Until recently, however, the message
(start they intended, like the meaning behind much of the rhetoric of black power, was rewritten and then altogether silenced
Page 39 of 55
Minutes (start) 9:16,
end 9:19
Seconds (start) 560,
(end) 567
Minutes (start 9:209:27)
67.
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
9:27-9:43 9:27-9:30
567-583 567-570
John Carlos
(1968)
9:43-9:50
583-590
All we ask for is
an equal chance
to be a human
being…
continued
9:27-9:43
Music: Robert Mann, 567-583
“Elevate,”
“Mexico 68 Olimpiadas
Freeplaymusic
‘Black Power” (44:00-44:15).
www.freeplaymusic.co Mexican TV News.
m
YouTube. Sep. 14, 2008.
Web. June 2012.
Music: Robert Mann,
9:43-9:50
It was “Elevate,”
583-590
not a gesture of Freeplaymusic
Why Run in
hate, Tommy
www.freeplaymusic.co
Mexico?
Smith explained, m
it was a gesture of
frustration.”
San Jose, 9:20California 9:27)
by the racist politics the movement opposed.
Bibliography
Origin
date of The Nation
OPHR Brent Musburger
Smithsonian
Deadspin
9:27-9:43 9:27- 9:27-9:43
9:27-9:43
567-583 9:43 567-583
567-583
567- Shannon
583
Bibliography
October
1968 Joshua, Black Boy Of Harlem. Dir. Bert Salzman. Joshua, Black Boy Of Harlem. Academic Film Archive
of North America, 1969. Web. July 2012.<http://archive.org/details/salzman_joshua>.
9:43-9:50 9:43- 9:43-9:50
9:43-9:50
583-590 9:50 583-590
583-590
583590
In July 1968, as the country prepared to support the United States Olympic Team in the Mexico City games, Sports
1991 Illustrated magazine published a series of articles under the headline, “The Black Athlete – A Shameful Story,” that
investigated the “problems and attitudes of the black athletes whose performances all of us sports fans cheer so
enthusiastically but about whom we know so little.” 3 The series was the result of four months of painstaking research
by national correspondents who performed background interviews with athletes, coaches, educators, and prominent
people in the black community. Armed with their reports, Jack Olsen, a Sports Illustrated reporter who, during his period
at TIME magazine covered the crisis in Little Rock in a dozen cover stories, began conducting his own interviews, a
process which took a month. Olsen and the other SI correspondents were amazed to find that the black athletes were
eager to tell their stories to a white audience, “and had almost never had a chance.”4
The first installment of the five part series was subtitled “The Cruel Deception.” It begins by asking whether “sport in
America deceived itself” and noting that black athletes at the time were increasingly “saying that sport is doing a
disservice to their race by setting up false goals, perpetuating prejudice and establishing an insidious bondage all its
own. Now, when Negro athletes are shaking numerous college administrations with their demands and a boycott of the
1968 Olympics is no idle threat, SI explores the roots and validity of the black athlete’s unrest–and finds them well
founded.” The five part series covered the issues of, “the shockingly frustrating life of the black college athlete, the vast
gulf between black and white sportsmen, how a Southwestern university treats the Negroes who are making it famous,
black-white problems among the pros and what racism has done to one NFL team,”.5
July 8, 1968. John Underwood. “The Non-Trial Trials” about the planned Boycott and the US Olympic trials. Sports
Illustrated.
Part 2: The Black Athlete: pride and prejudice.” P 18-31. Jack Olsen. In the second installment of the series, Olsen
studied how black athletes were “recruited into a society for which [they had] no cultural or educational preparation, and
Letter from the Publisher: Garry Valk, Pg 4. July 1, 1968 Sports Illustrated.
Valk, p 4
5 Jack Olsen, SI, “The Black Athlete - A Shameful Story” p. 12. Whole article is pg 12-27.
3
4
Page 40 of 55
68.
69.
isolated by its unwritten codes,” and came to discover, “an immense gap between [themselves] and the college
community.”6 P 19.
July 15, 1968. Part 3: The Black Athlete: In An Alien World.” Jack Olsen. Sports Illustrated. 28-43. Analyzes the
situation at UTEP where blacks made up less than 250 out of almost 10,000 students. “The University of Texas at El
Paso is a tough place for a black man, but it is not easy to tell where the prejudice originates, because – perhaps like a
lot of the rest of America – everybody is busy attributing it to everybody else.”7 Olsen summed up the situation at UTEP,
writing that, “the black athlete is there to perform, not to get an education, and when he has used up his eligibility he is
out.”8 Amazingly quotes Athletic Director George McCarty who states, “’One of our biggest detriments or handicaps with
the nigger athlete right now is the shortage of, you know, girls. It’s their normal field just like everybody else. … I’ll tell
you what we try to do when they try to start dating white girls. It’s my opinion we try to be real objective with ‘em. I have
set and talked with ‘em before, and I’m saying that society per se in this country is really not ready for this and really it’s
not accepted on either side….”9 This despite the fact that McCarty felt the blacks on campus actually liked him.
July 22, 1968. Part 4: The Black Athlete , In the Back of the Bus. P 28-41. Sports Illustrated. Jack Olsen.
Addresses the issue of racism in professional sports and begins with “The world of professional sport has offered great
opportunity to the Negro in recent years, but it has not offered him equality. He still gets less for doing more on behalf of
a white athletic establishment that appreciates him most when he knows his place.”
July 29, 1968. Part 5: The Black Athlete, The Anguish of a Team Divided. SI. Jack Olsen, p 20-35. The effect of racism
on the St Louis Cardinals of the NFL.
Bibliography
Valk, Garry. "Letter from the Publisher." Editorial. Sports Illustrated 1 July 1968: 4. Print.
Olsen, Jack. "Part 5: The Black Athlete, The Anguish of a Team Divided : The Effect of Racism on the St Louis
Cardinals of the NFL." Sport Illustrated 29 July 1968: 20-35. Print.
Olsen, Jack. "Part 3: The Black Athlete: In An Alien World." Sport Illustrated 15 July 1968: 28-43. Print.
Underwood, John. "“The Non-Trial Trials” about the Planned Boycott and the US Olympic Trials." Sport Illustrated 8 July
1968: n. pag. Print.
9:50-9:56 9:51-9:54
590-596 590-596
Malcolm X “By Any
Means Necessary”
continue
Seconds (start), (end)
Music: Robert Mann, Minutes (start), end
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
Malcolm X, By Any Means
www.freeplaymusic.co Necessary
m
9:51-9:54 9:51590-596 9:54
590Harlem, 596
NY
1964
9:51-9:54
590-596
Shannon
Bibliography
Carlos, John. "Dr. John Carlos at Red River Region Business Incubator, Paris, TX." Interview. Reel Texas
Digital Collection. Texas A&M University-Commerce Library, 8 Nov. 2011. Web. July 2012.
Jack Olsen, SI Black Athlete Pride And Prejudice. P 19.
Jack Olsen, SI, in an alien world, p 31.
8 Alien World, 31.
9 Alien World, 34.
6
7
Page 41 of 55
9:51-9:54
590-596
70.
<http://dmc.tamu-commerce.edu/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15778coll6/id/25/rec/15>.
9:57-10:00
1966
597-600
Commerce, Texas
10:0110:10
601-610
10:1110:27
611-627
10:02-10:04
602-604
“Joshua, Black Boy
of Harlem” (1969)
9:58-
Shannon
Music – Adam Sparks,
“Garage Band/ Final
Cut Express” 2012
Music – Adam Sparks, 10:01-10:10
“Garage Band/ Final 601-610
Cut Express” 2012
Joshua, Black Boy of
Harlem.
(1:30-1:39). Prod. Bert
Salzman. 1969. Academic
Film Archive of North
America. Archive.org. Web.
June 2011.
Bibliography
ETSU Track
Music – Adam Sparks,
coach Delmar
“Garage Band/ Final
Brown recruited Cut Express” 2012
John Carlos from
Harlem in 1966,
just two years
before this global
demonstration of
what Edward P.J.
Corbett would call
“The Rhetoric of
the Closed Fist.”
Carlos was highly
attuned to
racism’s
complexity and
ubiquity.
10:11-10:27
611-627
arcgis
10:0110:10
601-610
Harlem,
NY
10:0110:10
601610
1969
10:01-10:10
601-610
Shannon
Bibliography
10:1110:27
611-627
Commerc
e, Texas
10:1110:27
611627
19661967
10:11-10:27
611-627
Public Rhetoric
Shannon
71.
10:01-10:10
601-610
“You better chose your
friends right at that
college. Texas isn’t
118th street you know.
…Yeah, I know Mom
72.
10:11-10:27
611-627
73.
10:28-11:00
628-660
74.
“People are likely to resort to coercive, non-rational, even violent tactics to gain their ends when they felt that the
normal channels of communication are ineffectual or unavailable (Corbett)
As Lucas notes in his book (page 12-13):
For many radical activists, the available choices had already been limited by (if not eliminated by) status-quo elites who
had already determined the “proper channels” of rhetorical activity.”
Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith on antiwar protesters dismissed as being “uncivil” or “unreasonable”
“A rhetorical theory suitable to our age must take into account the charge that civility and decorum serve as masks for
the preservation of injustice, that they condemn the dispossessed to non-being, and that as transmitted in a
technological society, they become the instrumentalities of power for those who ‘have’
Robert L. Scott and Donald K. Smith. “The Rhetoric of Confrontation. Quarterly Journal of Speech. 55 (1969): 8.
“Thus,” according to Lucas, “the rhetoric of the closed fist, in many ways, had to be used against the highly regulated
rhetorics of the open hand controlled by powerful individuals.
Bibliography
Browne, Robert M. “Response to Edward P.J. Corbett, ‘The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed
Fist.” CCC 21.2 (May 1970): 187-190. Print.
Hawk, Brian. “Re-Opening Public Rhetoric: Corbett’s ‘The Rhetoric of the Open Hand and the Rhetoric of the Closed
Fist.” Enculturation: A Journal of Rhetoric, Writing, and Culture. (May 2012).
10:2811:00
628-660
10:28-10:32
John Carlos voice Music – Adam Sparks,
628-632
over describing “Garage Band/ Final
John Carlos (2011) Love field rest
Cut Express” 2012
rooms.
Music – Andrew
Yurievich Oudot,
“Explosion,”
Freeplaymusic,
www.freeplaymusic.co
10:2811:00
628-660
http://s3Dallas,
media4.ak.yelpcd Texas
n.com/bphoto/R_
EUVTd1bRS4NDmZn8Op
g/l.jpg
10:32-10:36
10:28-10:32
628-632
10:2811:00
628660
1966
10:28-11:00
628-660
Shannon
Bibliogrphy
Stowers, Carlton. "Carlos Hits Prejudice East Texas Sprinter May Join Boycott."Dallas News [Dallas, TX]
3 Dec. 1967. Print.
Page 42 of 55
(Corbett’s
article,
m
11:0011:13
660-673
11:1411:23
674-683
11:16-11:18
666-668
John Carlos
(2011)
11:2411:32
684-692
632-636
http://farm3.staticf
lickr.com/2160/25
15673214_d8188
c3c2f_m.jpg
10:36-10:45
636-645
http://images2.bri
dgemanart.com/c
gibin/bridgemanIma
ge.cgi/400wm.PN
P.2120520.70554
75/247033.jpg
10:45-10:54
645-654
Bus Segregation
10:54-11:00
654-660
Lion Track Team
It was I this
Music – Andrew
context that
Yurievich Oudot,
Carlos would
“Explosion,”
become
Freeplaymusic,
inextricably linked www.freeplaymusic.co
to the boycott that m
would change his
life just two years
later when at the
Commerce post
office in the fall of
1967 he picked
up the latest issue
of Track and
Field.
11:00-11:03
660-663
John Carlos “I
Music: Robert Mann,
was living that at “Elevate,”
the same time
Freeplaymusic
that I was reading www.freeplaymusic.co
that…”
m
Almost
Music: Robert Mann,
immediately local “Elevate,”
reporters began Freeplaymusic
flocking to black www.freeplaymusic.co
Olympic bound m
athletes around
the nation many
of whom like
Carlos said they
were eager to
11:14-11:23
lion track team
continued
11:0411:08
664-668
OPHR
11:08 - 11:13
668-673
SI Cover overlaid
with Harry
Edwards
11:0011:13
660-673
Commerc
e, Texas
11:00-11:13
660-673
The Root: I read you first attended East Texas State but left after one year. When did you connect with professor
Edwards and his OPHR movement?
11:00-11:13
660-673
75.
11:14-11:23
674-683
76.
11:24-11:32
684-692
77.
John Carlos: I had been reading in Track and Field News about the Olympic Project for Human Rights since I was a
student at East Texas State. Everything they were saying I agreed with. I'm saying to myself, these are the people I
want to be affiliated with.
After leaving East Texas State, I was back in New York and I got a call from professor Harry Edwards, who invited me
to a meeting at the Americana Hotel. In this meeting, Dr. King wanted to let professor Edwards, the SCLC and all those
that were involved know that he was coming out in support of the Olympic boycott. After that, I got an offer from
professor Edwards to matriculate at San Jose State.
Bibliography
11:1411:23
Black Power
674-683
image
Commerc
e, Texas
11:24-11:32
11:24684-692
11:32
Carlos hits
684-692
prejudice overlaid Commerc
with Carlos
e, Texas
hedges boycott
11:1411:23
674683
1967
11:2411:32
684692
1967
http://www.theroot.com/views/john-carlos-qa
11:14-11:23
674-683
Shannon
11:24-11:32
684-692
Shannon
Page 43 of 55
11:3311:37
693-697
11:3711:41
697-701
11:4111:47
701-707
11:33-11:37
participate in the
693-697
boycott.
The Social climate
here [in Commerce]
for the Negro is
discriminating and
terrible.”
John Carlos
(1967)
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
“If conditions don’t
change, something
is going to happen
at ET.”
John Carlos
East Texan (1967)
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
In Commerce,
such as
elsewhere such
public statements
about racism
were met with
widespread local
resistance.
Music: Robert Mann, 11:41-11:47
“Elevate,”
701-707
Freeplaymusic
“Segregation at All Costs:
www.freeplaymusic.co Bull Conner and the Civil
m
Rights Movement” (3:113:18). Eamon Ronan.
National History Day
documentary. YouTube.
2009. Web. June 2012.
11:33-11:37
11:3311:33693-697
11:37
11:37
Aerial View of
693693East Texas State 697Comm 697
Teachers College. erce,
1967
1950.
Texas
Photograph.
Historic ET
Collection.
Northeast Texas
Digital
Collections.
Texas A&M
UniversityCommerce. Web.
Sept. 2011.
11:37-11:41
11:3711:37697-701
11:41
11:41
Aerial View of
697-701 697East Texas State Commerc 701
Teachers College. e, Texas 67
1950.
Photograph.
Historic ET
Collection.
Northeast Texas
Digital
Collections.
Texas A&M
UniversityCommerce. Web.
Sept. 2011.
11:4111:4111:47
11:47
701-707 701USA
707
67
11:33-11:37
693-697
Shannon
11:33-11:37
693-697
78.
11:37-11:41
697-701
79.
11:41-11:47
701-707
80.
Bibliography
A Communications Primer. Prod. Charles Eames and Ray Eames. Prelinger Archives, 1953. Film. Moving
Image Archive. Prelinger Archives / IBM, 1953. Web. June 2012.
<http://archive.org/details/KingIsDead>.
11:37-11:41
697-701
Shannon
11:41-11:47
701-707
As black southerners began agitating for their rights, their white counterparts resisted their calls and national calls for
racial tolerance and equality. The Citizens’ Councils of America (formed as the White Citizens’ Council on July 11,
1954, in response to Brown v. Board of Education) was a white supremacist organization. With a membership of
around 60,000 people, mostly in the South, the group was famed for its opposition to desegregation during the 1950s
and 1960s, when it employed economic boycotts and other means of intimidation against black activists. By the 1970s,
its influenced had waned, and the Council of Conservative Citizens eventually succeeded it.
Senator Harry Byrd (D-Va) established the policy of Massive Resistance on February 24, 1956, to unite other white
politicians and leaders in his home state to campaign for new state laws and policies to prevent the desegregation of
the public schools after the Brown v. Board of Education decision. Though most laws created to implement Massive
Resistance were nullified by state and federal courts by January 1960, some policies and effects of the campaign
against the integration of public schools continued in the state for many years. Many schools, and even a school
system, shut down rather than integrate.
To coincide with local resistance to racial desegregation, politicians at the federal level signed the Southern Manifesto.
The lack of support for civil rights bills in Congress was not a new phenomenon. In the 1940s and 1950s, the President
and the Supreme Court led the way in pursuing the end to de jure segregation, even as Congress watered down the
acts it did pass. It was only in the mid-1960s that Congress, effectively managed by longtime former colleague
President Johnson, began to keep pace with the rest of the federal government.
Page 44 of 55
11:4811:51
708-711
11:49-11:51
709-711
“Love it or Leave it”
Delmer Brown
(1967)
Music: Robert Mann, 11:48-11:51
“Elevate,”
708-711
Freeplaymusic
Coach Delmer Brown
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
11:48-11:51
708-711
commerce
11:5111:55
711-715
11:51-11:55
711-715
“We are not behind
Carlos.”
“Negro Athletes
Refute Stalemates”
East Texan (1967)
Music: Robert Mann, 11:51-11:55
“Elevate,”
711-715
Freeplaymusic
Blank Screen
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
11:51-11:55
711-715
commerce
11:5511:59
715-719
Music: Robert Mann, 11:55-11:59
“Elevate,”
715-719
Freeplaymusic
A Communications Primer
www.freeplaymusic.co (2:35-2:36; 2:40-2:42; 2:48m
2:50)
Charles Eames. 1953. IBM.
Prelinger Archives.
Archive.org. Web. June.
2012.
11:5912:01
719-721
11:59-12:01
719-721
“Segregation at All
Costs: Bull Conner
and the Civil Rights
Movement” (0:100:12). Eamon Ronan.
National History Day
documentary.
YouTube. 2009. Web.
June 2012.
11:4811:4811:51
11:51
708-711 708“Love it or 711
leave it” Texas
Delmer
Brown
1967
11:5111:5111:55
11:55
711-715 711“We are 715
not behind Texas
Carlos.”
11:5511:59
715-719
USA
11:48-11:51
708-711
Shannon
11:48-11:51
708-711
81.
11:51-11:55
711-715
Shannon
11:51-11:55
711-715
82.
11:55- 11:55-11:59
11:59 715-719
715- Shannon
719
1953
11:55-11:59
715-719
83.
11:59-12:01
719-721
Black Screen
Shannon
84.
PART IV AASET
TIMESTA CAPTION
MP
12:02
UNIFY
12:04
Don’t let anybody
make you think that
NARRATION
AUDIO
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
Why I am Opposed to
the War in Vietnam
Why I am Opposed to
VIDEO
IMAGE
MAP
TIMELIN CONTEXT
E
67
Bibliography
Vietnam
Vietnam 67
FOOTNOTE
PERMISSIONS
MISCELLANEO
US
85.
86.
Page 45 of 55
12:15
God chose America
as his divine
messianic force”
Rev. Martin Luther
King Jr. (1967)
the War in Vietnam
1968
Commerce, Texas
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
87.
Bibliography
12:19
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
ET Apr10 1968 p2 commerce 68
12:23
Shotgun
Malcolm X
12:25
Shotgun
MLK
12:26
Shotgun
RFK
88.
Bibliography
89.
Bibliography
90.
Bibliography
91.
Bibliography
12:28
Music – Andrew
Sylvania Radio Receiver
Yurievich Oudot,
Commercial (16:45-16:48).
“Explosion,”
CBS Television. c1950.
Freeplaymusic,
Classic TV Commercials.
www.freeplaymusic.co Archive.org. Web. June.
m
2012.
12:31
Belford Page, ETSU
(1968-1971)
Music – Andrew
Belford Page 40:55-41:22
Yurievich Oudot,
“Explosion,”
Freeplaymusic,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
12:56
Joe Tave, ETSU
(1966-1970)
Music – Andrew
3:34 Joe Tave
Yurievich Oudot,
“Explosion,”
Freeplaymusic,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
92.
93.
Bibliography
Bibliography
Page 46 of 55
More on the
pain/anguish felt
94.
13:00
13:13
13:17
13:27
12:32
13:45
I always call Joe
Tave the MLK of
East Texas State
University.
-John Carlos
2012
Joe Tave
Music: Robert Mann, 4:19—Joe Tave
“Elevate,”
4:56: Joe Tave
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Music: Robert Mann, Belford Page
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
Amid the angst Music:
that fell across the Brewer, Simon.
nation following “Memorial Park.”
MLK’s
Freeplaymusic.com.
assassination,
BMI. Web. June 2012.
that very night as
the nation
grieved, university
students
everywhere
began planning
their next steps.
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
Joe Tave
Joe Tave
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
The next day
Music:
following the MLK Brewer, Simon.
march and
“Memorial Park.”
demonstration he Freeplaymusic.com.
helped organize, BMI. Web. June 2012.
Joe Tave
delivered a
rousing speech
which, according
to campus news
was interrupted
by applause
several times. In
it, Tave
encouraged the
students to unite
and fight our sick
95.
Bibliography
96.
ET Apr10 1968 p2
Bibliography
97.
Black Screen
98.
AASSET'S Free
Breakfast
ET April 10 1968
99.
student march
Joe Tave 1
students at rally
100.
Page 47 of 55
white brothers
with love and nonviolence as Dr
King would have
us do.
“…as Dr. King would
have us do.” Joe
Tave, President,
(ASSET), (1968)
14:05
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
“A Communications
Primer” (1953)
14:26
Communications Primer
8:32-8:54
But besides noise, there are
other factors which can
keep the information from
reaching its destination
intact. The background and
conditioning of the receiving
apparatus may so differ
from that of the transmitter
that it may be impossible for
the receiver to pick up the
signals without distortion
Distortion during
such difficult
times seems
inevitable.
Meaningful
communication
across difference
is difficult even in
the best of
circumstances.
These were not
the best of
circumstances.
14:34
101.
Bibliography
Bibliography
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Original
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Original
Black screen
14:42
Shortly after forming
ASSET, student Joe
Tave received a
death threat.
Music: Robert Mann,
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
14:45
Joe Tave,
ASSET President
1968-1970
Music: Robert Mann, Joe Tave FBI
“Elevate,”
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Bibliography
Bibliography
102.
103.
104.
105.
106.
Page 48 of 55
15:05
15:10
15:18
15:21
15:31
15:44
Music: Robert Mann, Communications Primer
“Elevate,”
(2:48-2:50; 2:48-2:50)
Freeplaymusic
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
107.
I, for one, believe
that if you give
people a thorough
understanding of
what confronts them
and the basic
causes that produce
it, they’ll create their
own programs…”
“And when you
create a program,
you get ACTION.”
Malcolm X
1964
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
Black Screen
108.
Music:
Brewer, Simon.
“Memorial Park.”
Freeplaymusic.com.
BMI. Web. June 2012.
Black Screen
109.
“Hear and Now”
(1958)
Hear and Now
Though the
campus was
largely isolated
and the students
overwhelmingly
conservative, at
least as
compared to
many public
universities of its
size, campus
activism was on
the rise
nonetheless.
In May 1968, one
month after the
formation of
AASET and
alongside several
other student
activist groups,
the regional
conference of the
Students for a
Democratic
Society sent a
field
representative to
E
Hear and Now
110.
Robert Mann, “Alpine
Resort,”
Freeplaymusic.com,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
image of campus
from air
black autonomy
Robert Mann, “Alpine
Resort,”
Freeplaymusic.com,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
student activism
Button Change
111.
Bibliography
112.
Bibliography
Page 49 of 55
15:57
16:18
16:24
16:35
“. . . not only are
there people at
ETSU ready for
activism, but [there
is] strong indication
that this region is
populated with
hundreds of
potentially radical
students--and it is
up to us to find
them.”
What they found Robert Mann, “Alpine
both surprised
Resort,”
and excited the Freeplaymusic.com,
representatives, www.freeplaymusic.co
who suggested m
they’d witnessed
on the ETSU
campus “proof”
that “not only are
there people at
ETSU ready for
activism, but
[there is] strong
indication that this
region is
populated with
hundreds of
potentially radical
students--and it is
up to us to find
them.
I think I can speak
Robert Mann, “Alpine
for the entire region
Resort,”
in saying “Welcome”
Freeplaymusic.com,
to our new brothers
www.freeplaymusic.co
and sisters in
m
Commerce.
–SDS
representative, May
1968
Against this
Robert Mann, “Alpine
backdrop local Resort,”
African American Freeplaymusic.com,
students were
www.freeplaymusic.co
nevertheless able m
to establish a
viable channel for
communication
with campus
administrators.
With Joe Tave, Robert Mann, “Alpine Joe Tave FBI
who became the Resort,”
organization’s
Freeplaymusic.com,
president on the www.freeplaymusic.co
night of MLK’s
m
assassination,
AASET presented
university
administrators
with a
“Declaration of
Rights” that
“included
Button Change
Student activists
student protests
Black Screen
113.
Bibliography
Bibliography
Original
114.
115.
Bibliography
Joe Tave younger
Original image of
Demands
Joe Tave 1968
Locust
Bibliography
Page 50 of 55
116.
16:45
16:47
16:49
Dr. David Talbot
(1968)
rights to African Robert Mann, “Alpine
American faculty Resort,”
Freeplaymusic.com,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Talbot
Ivory Moore
(1972)
and
administrators,
Ivory Moore
Robert Mann, “Alpine
Resort,”
Freeplaymusic.com,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Fair and equal Robert Mann, “Alpine
housing, access Resort,”
to campus
Freeplaymusic.com,
employment, and www.freeplaymusic.co
courses in African m
American studies.
117.
Bibliography
118.
Bibliography
housing
African studies
119.
Across the country, developers and local governments made use of restrictive covenants to limit blacks’ ability to move
in to certain neighborhoods. To address these racially motivated covenants, the Civil Rights Act of 1968 was enacted
to provide for equal housing opportunities regardless of race, creed, or national origin. President Johnson signed the
bill into law in the wake of the MLK assassination riots.
Stokely Carmichael once criticized the fact that legislation was needed to enforce civil rights, stating,
“Now we want to take that to its logical extension so that we can
understand then what its relevancy would be in terms of new civil
rights bills. I maintain that every civil rights bill in this country was
passed for white people, not for black people. For example, I am
black. I know that. I also know that while I am black I am a human
being. Therefore I have the right to go into any public place. White
people didn't know that. Every time I tried to go into a place they
stopped me. So some boys had to write a bill to tell that white man,
‘He's a human being; don't stop him.’ That bill was for that white
man, not for me. I knew it all the time. I knew it all the time.
… So that when you talk about open occupancy I know I can live
anyplace I want to live. It is white people across this country who are
incapable of allowing me to live where I want to live. You need a civil
rights bill, not me! I know I can live where I want to live.
So that the failure to pass a civil rights bill isn't because of Black
Power, isn't because of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee, is not because of the rebellions that are occurring in the
major cities. It is the incapability of whites to deal with their own
problems inside their own communities. That is the problem of the
failure of the civil rights bill.”
Bibliography
16:56
In a few short
Robert Mann, “Alpine Earth time lapse
years, all of their Resort,”
demands would Freeplaymusic.com,
be met, setting in www.freeplaymusic.co
motion a series of m
key hires and
other changes
that made” future
communication
channels possible
and locally
meaningful.
120.
Bibliography
Page 51 of 55
17:07
It wasn’t easy.
Robert Mann, “Alpine Fade to black
Such things never Resort,”
are.”
Freeplaymusic.com,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
121.
The leaders of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) sent a representative to the campus to assist ASSET in its
demand for balance and equality. They discovered that the campus administration was cooperating fully with all of the
demands placed. Black students, led by Tave were prepared to make as much “noise” as required in order to have
their demands met. Not only were there students who were ready and willing to set fires across the campus but, there
were at least two students who were prepared to take down the university’s computer system.
Tave held several meetings with Dr. Halliday during this period and he continued to stress the seriousness of the
students. As the administration proved to be willing to work with ASSET’s demands, there was still a considerable
backlash from students and the community at large. In an editorial in the East Texan on November 6, 1970, a
sophomore wrote in regarding what many whites of the era referred to as “the racial problem”. He wrote, “It is really
sad to me that these people are still fighting a battle that was over years ago. I hope that one day they will get enough
White money from the White taxpayers to pay for the education they will receive from White institutions with White
professors so they can learn just exactly what it is they are fighting against” (Helmsley).
Bibliography
Letter to the Editor. East Texan. November 6, 1970.
17:11
17:19
“Struggle is par for
the course when our
dreams go into
ACTION, but unless
we have the SPACE
to imagine a VISION
of what it means to
fully realize our
humanity all of the
protests and
demonstration in the
world won’t bring
about our
LIBERATION.”
Robin D.G. Kelly
(2003)
James Baldwin
(1963)
Robert Mann, “Alpine
Resort,”
Freeplaymusic.com,
www.freeplaymusic.co
m
Black Screen
122.
Bibliography
James Baldwin's Who is the
Nigger?
(Take this Hammer)
1:27-1:32 (. . . it isn’t me”
123.
Bibliography
Page 52 of 55
17:21
17:26
Crisis in Levittown. (2:372:42)
Prod. Lee Bobker and
Lester Becker. 1957.
Dynamic Films. Academic
Film Archive of North
America. Archive.org. Web.
Apr. 2012.
James Baldwin
(1963)
James Baldwin's Who is the
Nigger?
(2:29-2:34)
(Take this Hammer) “You’re
the nigger, baby.”
124.
Race was never just a matter of how you look; it’s about how people assign meaning to how you look.” Robin DG
Kelley, historian (http://www.pbs.org/race/images/race-guide-lores.pdf
125.
The slick thing about whiteness is that you can reap the benefits of a racist society without personally being a racist.”
John A. Powell, Legal Scholar (from above source)
“The slick thing about whiteness is that you can reap all the benefits of a
racist society without personally being racist.”
— John A. Powell, Director, Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Poverty, Ohio State University.
17:31
Crisis in Levittown. (17:5017:52). Prod. Lee Bobker
and Lester Becker. 1957.
Dynamic Films. Academic
Film Archive of North
America. Archive.org. Web.
Apr. 2012.
126.
Today the problem
belongs to
everyone.
127.
Nearly 50 years
later, African
Americans are “still
writing in the spaces
left and writing in the
spaces jacked.”
-Adam J. Banks
(2011)
128.
Page 53 of 55
remixed audio to make
noise.
Story by
Shannon Carter
129.
remixed audio to make
noise.
Script/Remix by
Shannon Carter,
Jennifer Jones,
Kelly Dent, and
Adam Sparks
130.
Video Editing by
Adam Sparks
remixed audio to make
noise.
remixed audio to make
noise.
remixed audio to make
noise.
Researchers
Kelly Dent,
Jennifer Jones,
Shannon Carter,
Sunchai
Hamcumpai
131.
Technical Support
by
Sunchai
Hamcumpai
Funded, in part,
by a grant from
National
Endowment For
the Humanities
132.
Additional support
provided by
133.
Page 54 of 55
old movie reel
old movie reel
134.
INTERMISSION
135.
Page 55 of 55