Children of Civil Rights brings together North Carolinians whose families played a role in the American Civil Rights movement. Through an interview-driven documentary and panel discussion, our audience discovers the similarities and differences among those who challenged institutional racism in Jim Crow America. Below are a selection of video clips edited from their individual interviews. The feature-length documentary and panel discussion can be watched on YouTube.
[Director, writer, interviewer, videographer, editor]
Joseph Holt, Jr.
In 1956, two years after Brown v. Board of Education, Joseph and Elwyna Holt applied for their son, Joseph Jr., to attend an all-white school in Raleigh, NC. In an effort to maintain segregation, the Raleigh School Board rejected the Holts' application, as well as their application to Needham Broughton High School the following year.
Although Joseph Jr. was ultimately denied attendance, the Holts are now recognized as trailblazers of desegregation. Their story is honored in the halls of the school in which Joseph Jr. was once rejected.
Dr. Nishani Frazier
Dr. Nishani Frazier, Professor and Director of Public History at North Carolina State University, unveils the briefcase that Medgar Evers had when he was assassinated. That briefcase was given to her father and remained in the Frazier family’s possession for the subsequent 60 years.
Cresswell Elmore
Cresswell Elmore’s father sued to end segregated primary elections in South Carolina; the landmark 1947 case Elmore V. Rice ended the all-white Democratic primary in the state.
Dr. Charmaine McKissick-Melton
Dr. McKissick-Melton is a retired professor of mass communications at NCCU. Her father is Floyd McKissick, Sr., who desegregated UNC Law School, served as national director of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), spoke at the 1968 March on Washington, and founded Soul City, North Carolina.
Jaki Shelton Green
Jaki Shelton Green, the first African American and third woman to be appointed as the North Carolina Poet Laureate, states her understanding of the power of poetry and shares a story of how her work impacted an unexpected reader.