Need books and movies based in the 1960s
February 12, 2016 7:14 AM   Subscribe

My dad was the principle of a school in the '60s during desegregation. He was a good man and managed it peacefully. I have his stories but I think that his experiences were the exception and not the norm. I would like to read fiction and nonfiction of others' experiences during that time. Movie recommendations are also welcome.

I'm considering writing a screenplay based on my dad's stories. I would like more information on the era. Personal stories are also welcome. Thanks in advance!
posted by myselfasme to Education (5 answers total) 3 users marked this as a favorite
 
I've been meaning to read How I Shed My Skin by Jim Grimsley, who writes about his experience as a white student in newly desegregated schools in North Carolina. I have heard it is fabulous.
posted by hydropsyche at 10:27 AM on February 12, 2016


I'm reasonably fond of There Goes My Everything: White Southerners in the Age of Civil Rights, 1945-1975, which has many nonfiction stories that I think would interest you. I was surprised (shouldn't have been, in retrospect) of the extreme social pressure placed on the white families who refused to join the school boycotts. The writing style is a bit repetitive and gratituitously academic at times, but skip those parts.
posted by wnissen at 10:48 AM on February 12, 2016


The Southern Oral History Project might have some great stories for you to listen to.

And the Library of Congress has a list of historical archives and collections from around the country that have info on desegregation.
posted by brookeb at 12:06 PM on February 12, 2016


Best answer: I recently read The Outskirts of Hope. It's a memoir written in two voices -- that of a 10 year old white girl and her white mother who move to a black town in the middle of the Mississippi cotton fields in 1967 so her father can open a medical clinic there. Her mother ended up becoming an English teacher at the school which was almost all black kids.

Another good book is Devil in the Grove which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2013. It's about a case in 1949 of four young black men accused of raping a white girl in the orange grove country around Orlando, Florida. Thurgood Marshall got involved in this case just as he was on the verge of bringing the Brown v. Board of Education lawsuit.

Finally, The Warmth of Other Suns tells the story of black folks migrating out of the Jim Crow south in the first part of the 20th century through three different people who made that journey. It tells how and why they left and what happened to them in the North. It doesn't specifically focus on the Civil Rights era but since it goes up to the present day, it covers that as well.
posted by elmay at 3:57 PM on February 12, 2016


Movie wise, there is Ruby Bridges, Crisis at Central High (which actually is set in the late 50's) and Remember the Titans (set in 1971, link to pdf).
posted by gudrun at 7:11 PM on February 12, 2016


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