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The Southern Poverty Law Center’s
Teaching Tolerance program is releasing
a digitally restored version of its 1994
Academy Award-winning documentary A
Time for Justice in September, making the
film available for the first time on DVD.
The 38-minute film uses firsthand
accounts, as well as original photographs
and video, to tell the stories of individual
sacrifice and courage that fueled the modern
civil rights movement.
The rerelease will bring this inspiring
documentary to a new generation of students.
The movie comes with a kit that
includes a teaching guide as well as six
original lessons. It also includes a classroom
poster depicting the civil rights
movement on a timeline. The generosity
of SPLC donors made it possible for
Teaching Tolerance to offer A Time for
Justice free to middle and high schools.
Richard Cohen, president of the
SPLC, says that A Time for Justice has
proven to be an invaluable tool for
teachers. “Many students today can’t
understand the degree of prejudice
and discrimination that Americans
once accepted as normal,” he said. “It’s
important that young people carry the
lessons of the civil rights movement
into their own roles as citizens.”
At the same time, the SPLC is
releasing a new study, “Teaching the
Movement: The State of Civil Rights
Education 2011.” The study found that
content standards—the bars that states
set for what schools should teach—are
uniformly and shockingly low when
it comes to civil rights education. The
critical events that transformed the
United States in the 1950s and 1960s
have been neglected or ignored completely
in these standards.
“We are urging states to make sure
that every student learns the important
lessons of the civil rights movement,”
says Teaching Tolerance Director
Maureen Costello. “Increasingly, our
nation’s schools are serving children
of color, and they need to learn a history
that speaks to the agency of minorities
and that teaches them the benefits
of civic engagement. We can’t afford to
leave these future citizens behind.”
The study ranks states on a lettergrade
scale. Among its key findings:
- The average grade across all states and the District of Columbia is an F. A majority of states earned D’s or below, with 34 earning a grade of F.
- For most states, instruction on the civil rights movement is “grossly inadequate to nonexistent.” Twelve states require no instruction at all about it.
- Alabama, Florida and New York were the only states to earn A’s. Three other states— Georgia, Illinois and South Carolina—earned B’s.
- States scored highest when it came to teaching about the movement’s leaders. Scores were lowest in teaching about institutionalized racism that fueled the movement, such as Jim Crow laws, or in teaching about resistance to the movement from groups like the Ku Klux Klan. Only one state—California—required students to learn about white supremacist groups in the context of the civil rights movement.
A Time for Justice was directed by
the late Charles Guggenheim, a fourtime
Oscar winner. In the film, the
voices of activists trace major events
of the civil rights movement, from the
death of Emmett Till in 1955 to the
passage of the Voting Rights Act of
1965. Grace Guggenheim, the director’s
daughter, oversaw the restoration
of the film, which won the 1994
Academy Award for Best Documentary
Short Subject. It was the first Teaching
Tolerance film to win an Oscar.
The restored film is scheduled to
be screened Sept. 22 at the National
Archives Building in Washington, D.C.
Civil rights activist and SPLC board
member Julian Bond, who narrates the
film, will be in attendance. So will Grace
Guggenheim and Richard Cohen. The
foot soldiers of the movement will be
there in spirit.
“A Time for Justice reveals the
way institutionalized racism can be
challenged,” Cohen said. “It provides
today’s students with a
profound understanding
of what people working
together for justice
can accomplish.”
