When we as students are handed an assignment, we usually don't ever entertain the possibly that it will be viewed by anyone other than our professor or perhaps some poor overworked grad student. For Mia Morgan and 19 other former University students, however, this couldn't be further from the truth. Their 2005 documentary Rising Up, created with the help of their professors Bill Reifenberger and William Thomas, recently debuted on national television to thousands of viewers all over the country.
A collaboration between the students of a history seminar taught by Thomas and a media studies course taught by Reifenberger, Rising Up details the struggles of African-Americans during the Civil Rights era across the south, specifically in Virginia. The film was created in just 16 weeks.
While the project got off the ground due to Professor Reifenburger's efforts in digitalizing local television news footage from the 1950s, the production was almost entirely student-driven. One of the participants was current University Law student Mia Morgan, who was chosen by Professor Thomas because of her previous research with the Virginia Center for Digital History on the Television News of the Civil Rights Era Project.
"The interesting and exciting part about the film from the student perspective is that it was an entirely student-driven project -- from the directing to the editing to the writing, even part of the musical score," Morgan said.
The film's creators split up their efforts into five segments, each with its own mini production team. The film showcases historical events through the lens of personal stories, particularly those of the organizers of major civil rights events. The documentary covers the South but concentrates on Virginia.
"We stuck with an over-arching theme," Morgan said. "What made people become activists? And did they even think of themselves as such?"
The film shows viewers not only the major historical events that occurred during the civil rights movement -- including Samuel W. Tucker's 1939 library sit-in, Irene Morgan's 1946 busing case before the Supreme Court, the school desegregation crisis in 1958-59, the 1960 sit-ins -- but also the individuals behind these events. The students actually managed to interview several individuals who were directly involved in the execution of these events.
"For me, this was the most powerful element of the project because people were literally telling us their life stories, exposing a very painful time in their life so that we as young people can be in a better position to understand how things were, how they are now and why we should never forget on whose shoulders we stand," Morgan said.
The footage that Thomas had been digitalizing provided rare footage of an NBC news debate between James J. Kilpatrick Jr., a leading news editor in the South and Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Segments like these combined with the personal interviews made up the bulk of the documentary.
While the first on-Grounds screening of the film in 2005 packed Clark Hall to capacity, the students and professors involved had no idea their project would go quite so far. Their efforts now have been shown to a much broader audience with the documentary's national television debut on PBS.
"We are all very excited . . . that the stories of everyday people who made significant sacrifices during the civil rights movement will be told," Morgan said. "Personally, I hope that it begins a dialogue both in the classroom and between families beyond those historic figures that have become iconic to the movement."
The documentary aired February 7.
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