[upbeat music] - The following program is from NET, the National Educational Television Network.

- I am an invisible man.

No, I'm not a spook like one of those who haunted Edgar Allen Poe, nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms.

I'm a man of substance, of flesh and bone, of fiber and liquids, and that might even be said to possess a mind.

I'm invisible simply because people refuse to see me.

It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

You wonder whether you aren't simply a phantom, in other people's minds.

You ache with a need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world.

Those lines were written by the Negro novelist Ralph Ellison in the late 1940s.

And at that time, the Negro was indeed the invisible men of American society.

Present in body, absent from America's consciousness.

Yet the time was coming when Negroes would begin to emerge from the dark prison of the exile.

When the sights and sounds of the Negro protests would reverberate in the land.

Many moods of protests from Martin Luther King to Malcolm X, mirrored, and often furthered by a rising group of Negro writers and poets.

Our program is the story of 10 years of events and the headlines, from the Supreme Court segregation decision of 1954 to the Civil Rights Law of 1964.

10 years to a reflection on those events.

Together, they make our story.

Some of the deeds, the voices, and the moods of a turbulent time.

[calm music] - We were on a journey from the shacks of the south to the ghettos of the north, a feeling arose.

Somehow, there had to be a move into the mainstream of America.

[train horn whistling] It would be hard, crowded years ahead, yet we felt deeply that we were on our way.

When did this feeling begin?

Who can say for sure?

Perhaps it began in the tired body of the Negro woman who had taken one too many trips to the back of the bus, or did it begin with the explosive Supreme Court decision of 1954 - To separate young people from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority, as to their status in the community, that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely ever to be undone.

We conclude that in the Bill of Public Education, the doctrine of separate but equal has no place.

Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.

[crowd cheering] - All right.

[crowd singing] [calm music] - I've come this far to freedom and I won't turn back.

I'm climbing to the highway from my old dirt track.

I'm stretching and I'm growing.

And I'll reap what I've been sowing, or my skin's not black.

On December 5th, 1955, many of Montgomery's buses were empty.

The result of a Negro boycott that began when Rosa Parks made a momentous decision.

- I work as a seamstress in a department store.

On December 1st 1955, after working all day, I was very tired.

I got the bus to go home, and after I had taken a seat on the bus, the driver demanded that I give the seat up for a white man.

I didn't see at all that I was being treated as a human being.

I refused to give up the seat.

I said, no, I wouldn't give it up.

- Whereas a majority of the Negro citizens of Montgomery, Alabama have refrained from riding city buses since December 5th, 1955, because of mistreatment, be it therefore resolved that we, the Negro citizens of Montgomery, Alabama, do now and will continue to carry on our mass protest [crowd cheering loudly] All in favor, let it be known by standing on your feet.

[crowd continues cheering] - For more than a year, Montgomery's Negroes went to work in taxes, carpools are on foot.

Then on November 13th, 1956, the Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.

The Jim Crow signs came down.

[crowd singing] For the first time, Montgomery's Negroes entered buses through the front door.

They could sit everywhere and they could sit alongside of whites.

- What's happened to this town?

It was peaceful here.

We all got along.

We didn't have no trouble.

They had their ways, we had ours, and everything went along the way God intended.

Now, they tell us we got to send our kids to school with Niggers.

Why everybody knows that ain't going to work.

Niggers can't learn like white folks.

- Three years after the Supreme Court decision in Little Rock, Arkansas, nine Negro children left their families to attend Central High School.

15 year old Elizabeth Eckford was one of them.

- I caught the bus and I got off a block from the school.

I saw a large crowd of people standing across from the soldiers' guarding central.

Then someone shouted, "here she comes, get ready."

The crowd moved in close and then began to follow me, calling me names.

Then somebody started yelling.

"Lyncher.

Lyncher.

No nigger bitch is going to get in our school.

Get out of here."

I don't know why that didn't seem like a safe place to me, but I don't think I could have gone another step.

Someone hollered, "drag her over to this tree."

- February 1st, 1960 in Greensboro, North Carolina, Negro students launched a movement that electrified the nation, the sit-ins.

- What caused folks you've been knowing all your life.

You're almost afraid to have them.

Almost afraid to talk to them.

You don't know what they're thinking.

[indistinct chatter] - The South reacted violently, but sit-ins were almost an immediate success.

Hundreds of lunch counters, hotels and theaters, were desegregated.

And the sit-ins led to the freedom rides, and attempt to break the back of segregation and transportation.

For the first time, the Federal Government intervened as the non-violent protest movement was greeted with savage violence.

- He came at me.

I prayed really quickly.

He grabbed me, pulled me over a short railing under the pavement.

We'll take shaming, we'll take beating, we're willing to accept death, but we're going to keep coming until we can ride from anywhere in the South to any place else we saw, without anybody making any comments, just as American citizens.

[indistinct chatter] - In Alabama and Mississippi, it took the government and federal marshals to enforce the 1954 Supreme Court decision.

Troops were brought in to protect Negroes who tried to get into segregated schools.

[guns firing] [crowd speaking indistinctly] In 1956, Autherine Lucy was admitted to the University of Alabama but was later expelled.

[crowd muttering] In 1961, Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes applied for admission to the University of Georgia.

And in 1962, James Meredith sought admission to the University of Mississippi.

- Is it a, kind of, lonely life, boy, despite all these people around you?

- I've been living a lonely life a long time.

- Go on there.

Go on there!

- Despite threats and violence, Negroes did win entry into all white universities.

But up to 1964, only 1% of Negro students went to integrated schools.

[train horn whistling] [somber music] - Dream and nightmare.

Nightmare, dreams is all.

Dreaming that the Negroes of the South had taken over in white pillet mansions, sitting on their wide veranda, wealthy Negroes have white servants, and colored children have white nanny.

Dear, dear, darling old white nannies.

Sometimes even buried with all our family.

Hand me, my mint julep, Mamet.

Make haste.

[brass band playing] A parade.

Grand Marshall in his white suit will proceed and behind will come with band and drum on foot, on foot, on foot.

Motorcycle cops wiped out of sight, if they can.

Solid black can't be right.

Marching, marching, marching noon till night.

I never knew that many Negroes were on Earth.

Did you?

I never knew.

Parade, a chance to let.

Parade, the whole world see.

Parade, old black me.

[brass band continues playing] - Birmingham, May 1963.

100 years after emancipation, James Baldwin wrote to his nephew, "Dear James, if the word "integration" means anything, this is what it means, that we, with love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it, for this is your home, my friend.

Do not be driven from it.

Great men have done great things here and will again and we can make America what America must become.

It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and in the most terrifying odds, achieved unassailable and monumental dignity.

[dogs barking] [crowd screaming] - Don't shop for anything on Capitol street.

Let's let the merchants down on Capitol street feel the economic pinch.

Let me say this to you.

I had one merchant to call me and he said, I want you to know that I've talked to my national office today, and they want me to tell you that we don't need Nigger business.

[continues speech] - June 1st, 1963, Medgar Evers, secretary of the NAACP in Mississippi was selected by the New York Times as the man in the news, and referred to as the quiet integrationist.

- Our relatives, our neighbors, not to trade at these stores.

Now finally, ladies and gentlemen, and this is final.

We will be demonstrating here until freedom comes to Negroes here in Jackson, Mississippi.

[crowd cheering] - On June 12, 1963, a sniper's bullet killed Medgar Evers.

Medgar Evers once said, "it may sound funny, but I love the south.

I don't choose to live anywhere else.

There's land here where a man can raise cattle, and I'm going to do that someday.

There's room here for my children to play and grow and become good citizens, if white man will only let them."

[somber music] Green.

A nightmare.

- We are confronted primarily with a moral issue.

It is as old as the scriptures and it is clear as the American Constitution.

- Eight days before president Kennedy sent to Congress the most sweeping civil rights legislation in history, he spoke to the nation.

- Whether we are going to treat our fellow Americans as we want to be treated.

If in America, because his skin is dark, cannot eat lunch in a restaurant open to the public, if he cannot send his children to the best public school available, if he cannot vote for the public officials who represent him, if, in short, he cannot enjoy the full and free life which all of us want, then who among us would be content to have the color of his skin changed and stand in his place?

Who among us would then be content with the counsels of patience and delay?

One hundred years of delay have passed since President Lincoln freed the slaves, yet their heirs, their grandsons, are not fully free.

They are not yet freed from the bonds of injustice.

They are not yet freed from social and economic oppression.

And this Nation, for all its hopes and all its boasts, will not be fully free until all its citizens are free.

[crowd cheering] - So even though we faced the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.

It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day, this nation will rise up, live out the true meaning of its creed.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

[crowd cheering] - August 28th, 1963, more than 200,000 people, black and white, marched on Washington for jobs and freedom for Negroes.

The nation had never seen anything like it.

- One day, live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream.

[crowd cheering loudly] I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its viscous racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

[crowd cheering] With this faith, we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

[crowd cheering] This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing.

Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring."

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true.

[crowd cheering] When we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last!

Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"

[crowd cheering loudly] - What happens to a dream deterred?

- Mama.

I washed so many.

I mean, I want so many favors that sometimes, I think they're going to drive me crazy.

See, I'm 35 years old and I ain't got nothing.

I ain't going to be nothing, mama.

Just look at me.

Look at me.

- I'm looking at you and you a good looking boy.

You got a job, a fine wife.

- A job?

Now, I open and close car doors on me.

I drive a man around in his limousine and I say, yes, sir, and no, sir, and shall I take the guy, sir.

Mama, that is not a good job.

That is not good at all.

I believe that if I could make you understand, - Understand what, baby?

- Well, sometimes it's like, I can see my future just stretched out in front of me, my whole future, a big blank, empty space full of nothing.

Just hanging at the edge of my days waiting for me, mama.

But it don't have to be.

Mama, sometimes when I'm downtown driving a man around, we pass them cool, quiet-looking restaurant, I look in.

I'll see these white boys, they sit talking.

Talking about deals.

Deals worth of millions of dollars, mama.

And half the time, they don't look older than me.

- Oh, son, how come you're talk, talk, talk too much about money.

- Because it's life.

- Oh.

So now, money is life.

Once upon a time, freedom used to be life.

Well now it's money.

- Mama, it was always money.

We just didn't know it.

- No.

No.

Something's changed.

You something new, boy.

In my time, we was worried about not being lynched in and getting to the North and how to stay alive and still have a sense of dignity too.

Now here come you and beneath us, talking about things we ain't hardly ever talked about, me and your daddy.

You ain't satisfied or proud of nothing we done.

I mean that you had a home and then we kept you on top until you was grown, and that you don't have to ride to work on the back of nobody's street car.

New money, children, but how different we've become.

?

[children indistinct chattering] What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore and then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

[train passing] [crowd chattering] - Explosive demonstrations, Rockford North, as well as the South, as Negroes struggled for equal opportunities.

[indistinct chatter] [woman wailing] - Freedom!

Freedom!

Freedom!

Freedom!

[protesters continue shouting] [somber music] Dreams and nightmares, nightmares and dreams.

By 1968, civil rights organizations turn their attack upon southern voting practices.

From the north, civil rights workers came down to assist and persuade Negroes who were afraid or indifferent to register.

- You on your way to better your life, to better your life of your children, to build on [inaudible] You're not a registered voter, you're not a [inaudible] citizen, ma'am.

If you like to go to [inaudible] - No.

- All right.

Thank you, grandma.

- By 1963, Negro groups decided to make voting a major goal.

As late as 1961, only about 25% of Negroes in the south could vote.

In 1964, it rose to 40%.

[indistinct chatter] On August 4th, 1964, three civil rights workers, Michael Schwerner Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, were found buried near Philadelphia, Mississippi.

They had been shot.

When I die, I'm sure I will have a big funeral.

Curiosity seekers coming to see if I am really dead or just trying to make trouble.

- This Civil Rights Act is a challenge to all of us to go to work in our communities and our States, in our homes and in our hearts, - July 2nd, 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Bill into law.

- So tonight I urge every public official, every religious leader, every business and professional man, every working man, every housewife.

I urge every American to join in this effort to bring justice and hope to all our people and to bring peace to our land.

[crowd singing] - If the word "integration" means anything, this is what it means, that we, with the love, shall force our brothers to see themselves as they are, to cease fleeing from reality and begin to change it.

[crowd continues singing] - I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice.

- The day of the sitting, the lying, the crawling, the crying and the begging is outdated.

- Our move is the right move.

We got to go out and get what we want.

- It isn't until the very, what's so called, least of us, is free that I am free.

So for that matter, any of us, because if as human beings, we cannot live in our country and be accepted as human beings and free citizens, then something doesn't matter with something, and it isn't me.

- And we let them know that we [inaudible] Like the strong Jim say, "we mean it.

We will never turn back."

- The history of the past decade ends as it began, with a question.

Where does a revolution end?

The answer is, of course, that there are no convenient dates that marked the beginning or the end of a period.

What seems to have started at Montgomery or with the Supreme Court decision did not really stop that, nor did it end with the Civil Rights Law of 1964, or Selma, or what may happen tomorrow.

Today, America's Negroes are saying the same things they said 10 years ago, or 100 years ago for that matter, but something new has happened since 1954.

For the first time, the rest of America was listening.

[somber music] [upbeat music] - This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.