Multimedia Collection
Terror and Triumph (1940-1954)
(The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow series)
VHS
56 minutes
E185.61 .R57 2002 Pr.4
Episode four examines the surge of Black activism that took place after World War II. Black veterans returned from war determined to achieve the same rights at home that they had fought for in Europe in a Jim Crow army. One vet, Medgar Evers, became an organizer for the Mississippi NAACP; he was assassinated for his work in 1963. In Georgia, John Wesley Dobbs, head of the Black Masons, organized the first voter registration drives.
Predictably, whites again answered Black demands for equality with violence. But this time President Truman responded with a civil rights initiative and integrated the Army. Barriers fell in sports and entertainment. The NAACP legal team discovered in towns like Farmville, Virginia, cases that ultimately succeeded in challenging segregation in public schools. The landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision irreparably breached the legal basis for Jim Crow, and through that opening soon poured the legions of the Civil Rights Movement.
Distributed by California Newsreel (www.newsreel.org)
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