Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950–1970
"Television News of the Civil Rights Era 1950-1970" is a digital history project produced by Dr. William Thomas and the Virginia Center for Digital History at the University of Virginia. The project considers the role of Southern television during Virginia's Massive Resistance campaign in opposition to the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The national coverage of the Civil Rights Movement transformed the United States by showing Americans the violence and segregation of African Americans' journey for their civil rights. Local television news in Virginia in the 1950s was more balanced than the print media. The current archive contains films from two local television stations in Virginia, WDBJ Roanoke and the WSLS Roanoke. About 230 films have been digitized. The work is primarily made up of streaming video of televised news stories, with transcripts of the desegregation debate in Virginia, including contemporary interviews with Governors Thomas B. Stanley and J. Lindsay Almond. Thomas also includes several interpretive essays, primary source documents, Martin Luther King Jr., Richard M. Nixon, original footage of school desegregation, public meetings, interviews with citizens, and suggested classroom applications. Thomas is now a professor of history at the University of Nebraska. Local television news In Roanoke, Virginia,