Community Activism and Civil Rights

A virtual art and library resource exhibition.

From the University Archives.

From the University Archives. A timeline of political and activist activity at Chatham University over the decades.

Stream documentaries, news clips, and other videos pertaining to the American Civil Rights Movement on Academic Video Online.

(Documentary, 59 minutes) Program examines the student takeover of Ford Hall at Brandeis University, an administration building Brandeis students occupied during the filming of the program. The first portion of the program features black and white footage of the takeover, including an enumeration of student demands and a statement to the press by university President Morris Abram. The second half of the program consists of a panel discussion of Black Power on university campuses. Discussion panel is moderated by Henry Hampton (Founder, Black Side, Inc.) and features Brandeis students Randy Bailey and Ricardo Millette, Boston University student Doris Francis, Harvard University student Skip Griffin, and Associate Dean of Jackson College Beatrice Miller.

(Recorded speech, 28 minutes) This video is a recording of Cesar Chavez's speech about non-violence.

(Documentary, 1 hour 33 minutes) Chronicle of activist Jane Jacobs' battle with developers who threatened to demolish NYC's most historic neighborhoods and a lesson in the power of the average person to push back.

(Documentary, 1 hour 37 minutes) Dolores Huerta is among the most important, yet least known, activists in American history. An equal partner in co-founding the first farm workers unions with Cesar Chavez, her enormous contributions have gone largely unrecognized. Dolores tirelessly led the fight for racial and labor justice alongside Chavez, becoming one of the most defiant feminists of the twentieth century - and she continues the fight to this day, at 87. With intimate and unprecedented access to this intensely private mother to eleven, the film reveals the raw, personal stakes involved in committing one's life to social change.

(Documentary, 1 hour, 18 minutes) James Wentzy's in-your-face Fight Back, Fight AIDS is a compilation of footage documenting the first ACT UP meeting in 1987 on New York City's Wall Street and continues to 2002. Amateur video recording - at the demonstration level and from the private, behind-the-scenes meetings and training - reveals the astonishing camaraderie that united a politically enraged community, regardless of age, race, ethnicity or gender. Recognizable faces among the hundreds of ACT UP activists, timelessly captured over the 15 years of footage, are likely to be moving. Particularly noteworthy is seeing activist and author Vito Russo issue a speech equating AIDS to war then demanding to know how the two landscapes differ. Whether or not your own political views are aligned with ACT UP's today, this infinitely relevant political group taught us to fight back against government complacency, to protest the high cost of pharmaceutical drugs, and to simply ask others, 'Where is your rage?'

(Documentary, 1 hour) For Love and For Life places the 1987 March on Washington in perspective among the major political events of our times. It recounts how the events were organized, and creates all the immediacy of being there. This exciting presentation explores all six days during which 650,000 lesbians, gay men and their supporters came to Washington, DC and made history. The inaugural display of the Names Project Quilt, the largest civil disobedience ever at the Supreme Court, the first community Wedding and the Harvey Milk Memorial are just some of the events highlighted from this historic March and Rally. The energy and emotions of these events are presented through the speeches and sounds of the March, a comprehensive narration, and hundreds of dramatic images. For Love and For Life is both emotionally powerful and enormously entertaining.

(Documentary, 2 hours) On a July day in 1990, a confrontation propelled Native issues in Kanehsatake and the village of Oka, Quebec, into the international spotlight. Director Alanis Obomsawin spent 78 nerve-wracking days and nights filming the armed stand-off between the Mohawks, the Quebec police and the Canadian army. This powerful documentary takes you right into the action of an age-old Aboriginal struggle. The result is a portrait of the people behind the barricades.

(Documentary, 53 minutes)This acclaimed documentary is the best case study of environmental injustice and racism available on video. In the economically depressed, largely African-American "West End" of Chester, Pennsylvania, Zulene Mayfield lives next door to the fourth-largest trash-to-steam incinerator in the nation and a few doors away from a large processing facility for infectious and hazardous medical waste. The county's sewage treatment plant sits adjacent to her neighbors' homes a block away, and additional waste-processing facilities have been proposed for the community. Residents believe that their lives are being disrupted, their health threatened, their community destroyed, and the very air they breathe dangerously polluted. A grassroots organization called Chester Residents Concerned for Quality Living (CRCQL) has taken an active role in opposing the facilities and in publicizing the plants' impact on their community. Representatives of the waste-processing companies argue that their facilities are safe and that they bring much-needed jobs to Chester. The story unfolds dramatically as the residents seek to discover and confront the forces that have chosen their community for such facilities. Though CRCQL receives threats and its office is vandalized, the group continues to protest and to challenge the waste industry.

Credo Reference encyclopedic entries concerning activism. Includes broad, introductory information, images, links to other relevant resources, and keyword concept map tools.

A digital exhibit from the Chatham University Archives.

Credo Reference encyclopedic entries concerning Civil Rights. Includes broad, introductory information, images, links to other relevant resources, and keyword concept map tools.

Credo Reference encyclopedic entries concerning community organizing. Includes broad, introductory information, images, links to other relevant resources, and keyword concept map tools.

Adam Matthew Primary Source Collections. From the website: "Music, Politics, Fashion, Youth Culture - the period from 1950 to 1975 witnessed dramatic changes in society. From the austerity of the 1950s to the excess of the 1970s, discover the period through a wealth of printed and manuscript sources, visual material, ephemera and video clips. By focusing on substantial collections of original archival material - manuscript, typescript and ephemera, from key libraries in Britain and America - Popular Culture, provides the primary sources that will enable students and scholars to examine key issues and events of the period."

Adam Matthew Primary Source Collections. From the website: "Based at Fisk University from 1943-1970, the Race Relations Department and its annual Institute were set up by the American Missionary Association to investigate problem areas in race relations and develop methods for educating communities and preventing conflict. Documenting three pivotal decades in the fight for civil rights, this resource showcases the speeches, reports, surveys and analyses produced by the Department’s staff and Institute participants, including Charles S. Johnson, Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., and Thurgood Marshall."