Free at Last: Civil Rights Heroes

World Almanac Video has created an excellent source to supplement the study of both key figures and turning points in the Civil Rights movement during the '60s in this 3-volume series providing biographical overviews of important, but (generally) lesser-known figures from this excruciating period in American history. Following a brief introductory segment limning the status of African-Americans during the 1950s and ‘60s, backed by footage of familiar figures (Martin Luther King Jr., Rev. Jesse Jackson, U.S. Rep. John Lewis), the opening volume, Emmett Till and Medgar Evers, proceeds to tell the harrowing story of Emmett Till, a 14-year-old boy who was brutally murdered after having, allegedly, whistled at a white woman. Till was beaten until his head was crushed, one eye was gouged out, and he was then shot. His mother's decision to hold an open-casket funeral was made, she explains in an interview, because she felt the world needed to see the results of this spectacularly inhumane act. Archival photographs of Till in his coffin are shown, repeatedly, to underscore his mother's point. Till's murderers were acquitted. The other profile on the video is of Medgar Evers, an important figure in the NAACP and a leader in African-American voter registration in Mississippi, who was assassinated at his home in Jackson, MS, in 1963. The first two trials of his assassin resulted in hung juries; the third convicted Byron de la Beckwith in 1994, more than 30 years after Evers was murdered. In presenting both segments, the producers have made excellent use of archival film footage, historical photographs, and interviews, and while occasionally the re-enactments are stilted, they are used judiciously. Highly informative and useful, this series will lend itself to an intense, and intensive, discussion about civil rights in America. An accompanying booklet includes an excellent overview of the video, timeline of events, brief biographies, vocabulary, and resource lists. The other two volumes in the series (each are available individually for $24.95) are: The Birmingham Four/Schwerner, Chaney and Goodman and Viola Liuzzo, Rev. James Reeb, Jimmy Lee Jackson, Vernon Dahmer. Enthusiastically recommended. Aud: H, C, P. (M. Rechel)