WCVE PBS and the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia partner for a documentary. “You know we were kind of all in denial. Oh they'll never shut the schools down. They can't do that. People have to go to school.” - Robert Hamlin, Prince Edward County
Following a mandate by the US Supreme Court to desegregate schools, Virginia’s government instead chose to lead a movement called Massive Resistance that affected the lives of school children across most of the South, and left a permanent scar on the history of the entire nation. “Locked Out” is the story of the fall of Massive Resistance and the desegregation of public schools told by the students who lived through it. The one-hour documentary produced by WCVE PBS in partnership with the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, tells the stories of many of the students who, at a young age, found themselves on the front lines of the fight against Massive Resistance and whose lives were indelibly altered by Virginia’s refusal to integrate the state’s public schools. “Locked Out” offers first-hand accounts of the negative effects of this concerted abuse of public power and yet tells how it also paved the way for future progress. In 1989, thirty years after the fall of Massive Resistance, Virginia would become the first state to elect an African-American governor. In 2008, exactly fifty years after the first Virginia school was closed, Barack Obama carried the Commonwealth in the presidential election.
“Now you can look at the schools and kids don’t know what all this is about. I mean, they just think it’s normal that you go to the closest school in your neighborhood, regardless of the color of your skin or anything.” - Michael Jones, Arlington County
Tune in November 16, 2009 at 9pm on WCVE PBS and WHTJ PBS.
