At first I was kind of, eh, another news program about civil rights in the 60s. Seen all the footage, know all the stories.
Yes and no. I’ve never seen the events of the time reported this well.
One example. George Wallace had a famous standoff at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa when he tried to deny admission to two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. JFK stepped in and the students were admitted. That’s a well-known incident. What’s brilliant about this episode is how CNN found new footage, from obviously disparate sources, and pieced it together, along with existing audio, to show the scene unfolding almost in real time. We get crude B&W TV footage, film footage on higher-resolution stock, color footage which I’m guessing comes from amateur film cameras in the crowd, and other footage of varying quality. It’s edited together seamlessly and in sync with the audio. It’s so well done, I didn’t realize how smooth it was until I watched that segment later again tonight with Melanie.
One more surprise. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech at The Great March on Washington. Mahalia Jackson sang at the event and stood nearby while MLK spoke. According to Clarence Jones, Jackson shouted to King during the speech to talk about “the dream.” King then set aside his prepared speech and delivered his famous “I have a dream” segment, apparently off-the-cuff and from the heart.
Wow.
I get emotional when I see greatness, and watching that got me teary.
This series isn’t just an expert view of the Sixties, it’s simply a fantastically well done documentary of an era. Check it out.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/the-sixties
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