Over 200 clips documenting the Virginia civil rights movement now are available to the public because of the collaboration of the Virginia Center for Digital History, the University's Robertson Media Center and University students, according to History Prof. William Thomas, III.
The clips are news footage from The Civil Rights era from two Roanoke television stations: CBS affiliate WDBJ and NBC affiliate WSLS. The collection documents coverage of school desegregation, civil rights debates, interviews with Virginia citizens involved in the movement and speeches by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, Richard Nixon and former Virginia governors, said Judy Thomas, head of the Robertson Media Center.
The footage originally is from 16 mm reels, and the Robertson Media Center staff converted the footage to a digital format. Through the digitizing process, the clips have been posted on a Web archive, providing free public access of these primary sources of the civil rights movement.
The Virginia Foundation for the Humanities funded the digitalization process, William Thomas said.
William Thomas instigated the project to find and digitalize the clips. As director of the Virginia Center for Digital History, William Thomas and his assistants at the Center worked for three or four years to collect the footage, according to Blair Coin, one of Thomas' students.
William Thomas then applied for a grant from the Mead Endowment to fund a documentary of the Virginia civil rights movement. With the awarded funds as well as the support of the Seven Society and the Virginia Alumni Association, William Thomas created a class to research and produce the documentary, Coin said.
This semester, William Thomas worked with students in his class, "Documenting The Civil Rights Era." The class consists of ten history students and ten media studies students in Media Studies Prof. Bill Reifenberger's class who have worked throughout the semester to research and film the documentary. The history students focused on providing the content of the film while the media studies students worked on the technical aspects of filming the documentary.
"They have done a tremendous job," William Thomas said.
The students not only gathered and uncovered clips for the documentary but also interviewed 11 Virginia citizens who were involved in important moments of The Civil Rights movement, William Thomas said.
"It's different from any other documentary that has been created, as it does not focus on white resistance to segregation but on the black experience," Coin said.
A screening of the documentary will be open to the University May 10 at 6 p.m. in Clark Hall.
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