Steven Channing collection of February One recordings, 2002-2003, 2003

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Collection is open for research. Video recordings require digitization prior to use. Contact Rubenstein Library Research Services for more information.
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Summary

Creator:
Channing, Steven A., Cerese, Rebecca, Khazan, Jibreel, 1941-, McCain, Franklin (Franklin Eugene), 1941-2014, and McNeil, Joseph (Joseph Alfred), 1942-
Abstract:
Eighty-seven betacam videocassettes containing interviews and production footage for the 2003 documentary February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four, directed by Steven Channing and Rebecca Cerese.
Extent:
4 Linear Feet
87 items
Language:
Materials in English.
Collection ID:
RL.13106

Background

Scope and content:

Eighty-seven betacam videocassettes containing interviews and other production footage for the 2003 documentary February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four, directed by Steven Channing and Rebecca Cerese, and detailing the 1960 sit-in at the Woolworth's lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. Participants in the film include, in order of appearance, Jibreel Khazan (formerly Ezell Blair), G. Jean Howard, Shelia Blair-Cheng, William H. Chafe, Franklin McCain, Frank Richmond, Joe McNeil, David Richmond (archival footage), Corene Blair, Geneva Tisdale, Vincent Hardin, Bettye Davis McCain, Claudette Burroughs-White, Ann Dearsley-Vernon, Lewis Brandon, Walter A. Burch, Hal Sieber, and James C. Renick.

Biographical / historical:

Steven Channing was born and educated in New York and began his professional life as an academic historian, with a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. He taught at the Universities of Kentucky, Stanford, and at Duke, was a research fellow at Johns Hopkins and, as a Fulbright Exchange Scholar, taught at the University of Genoa, Italy. His published books include the Allen Nevins Prize winning study Crisis of Fear - Secession in South Carolina (1970), and Kentucky: A History (1976), and The Confederate Ordeal (1983) for Time-Life's Civil War series. Dr. Channing founded Video Dialog Inc. (VDI) in 1987 to further his interest in producing documentary films for broadcast, to produce informational videos for diverse clients, and to create a series of educational videos for schools. In 2002-2003, Dr. Channing and Rebecca Cerese produced February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four, which premiered on PBS in 2004. Biographical information taken from https://stevenchanning.com/, accessed 2024-11-14

Rebecca Cerese's films have been nationally and locally broadcast on PBS and at film festivals that center around social and economic justice. Her films include include February One: The Story of the Greensboro Four, Change Comes Knocking - The Story of the North Carolina Fund, Down Home - Jewish Life in NC, Durham - A Self Portrait, Generation of Change and Gear Up - There Oughta Be a Law. As an independent filmmaker she produced Landscapes of the Heart, a biographical portrait of acclaimed writer Elizabeth Spencer. In 2018, Rebecca joined the NC Justice Center, becoming the first Health Engagement Coordinator for their Health Advocacy Project. Now as part of a volunteer group called Healthcare For All, Y'all, Rebecca is promoting Medicare For All. Biographical information taken from https://stevenchanning.com/, accessed 2024-11-14

Description for the film from PBS:

In one remarkable day, four college freshmen changed the course of American history. On February 1, 1960, Ezell Blair, Jr. (now Jibreel Khazan), David Richmond, Franklin McCain and Joseph McNeil—later dubbed the Greensboro Four—began a sit-in at a Woolworth's lunch counter in a small city in North Carolina. The act of simply sitting down to order food in a restaurant that refused service to anyone but whites is now widely regarded as one of the pivotal moments in the American Civil Rights Movement. Offering an unusually intimate portrait of four men whose moral courage at ages 17 and 18 not only changed public accommodation laws in North Carolina but also served as a blueprint for non-violent protests throughout the 1960s, FEBRUARY ONE: The Story of the Greensboro Four reveals how these idealistic college students became friends and inspired one another to stage the sit-in, and how the burden of history has impacted their lives ever since.

Despite hard-fought gains in the fight for racial equality, segregation was still firmly entrenched in 1960 America. Black citizens were still treated as second-class citizens. The brutal 1955 lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till—an event that first made Greensboro Four members aware of the violent consequences of racism—served as a call for change. Recent advances in Civil Rights included the 1954 Brown vs. the Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision, the 1955–56 Montgomery bus boycott and the 1957 desegregation of Little Rock High School in Arkansas. But by 1960, the movement had hit a lull.

February 1, 1960 changed that. The Greensboro Four were close friends at North Carolina A&T University, and two of the four had grown up where segregation was not legal, while another's father was active in the NAACP. In FEBRUARY ONE, they recount how the idea for the sit-in grew out of their late-night talks in the campus dormitory. On the night of January 31, 1960, the four dared each other to do something that would change the country and their own lives forever. They decided to sit-in at the whites-only lunch counter at Woolworth's in downtown Greensboro the next day.

On February 1, dressed in their Sunday best, the four men sat down at the lunch counter. Frank McCain remembers that he knew then this would be the high point of his life: "I felt clean… I had gained my manhood by that simple act." The four were refused service. When they did not leave, the store manager closed the lunch counter. In the days that followed, they were joined by more students from local colleges. The Civil Rights Movement was the first major social movement to be covered by television news, so word of the events in Greensboro spread across the nation like a prairie fire. Within just a few days, students were sitting in at lunch counters in 54 cities around the South.

Although Greensboro's civic leadership pressured the president of North Carolina A&T to halt the protests, he counseled the students to follow their own consciences. Finally, after months of protests, the Woolworth management quietly integrated its lunch counter during the summer when students weren't around. The wave of direct action started by the Greensboro Four coalesced in the formation of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the vanguard of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. FEBRUARY ONE tells the story of one of the most pivotal events in the Civil Rights Movement, a movement of ordinary people motivated to extraordinary deeds. This moving film shows how a small group of determined individuals can galvanize a mass movement, spur others to action and focus a nation's attention on justice and change.

https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/documentaries/februaryone/, accessed 11/13/2024.

Acquisition information:
The Steven Channing collection of February One recordings were received by the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library as a gift in 2024.
Processing information:

Processed by Craig Breaden, November 2024

Accessions described in this collection guide: 2024-0097

Arrangement:

Arranged alphabetically by interviewee name.

Rules or conventions:
Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Contents

Using These Materials

Using These Materials Links:

Using These Materials

Restrictions:

Collection is open for research. Video recordings require digitization prior to use. Contact Rubenstein Library Research Services for more information.

Terms of access:

The copyright interests in this collection have not been transferred to Duke University. For more information, consult the Rubenstein Library's Citations, Permissions, and Copyright guide.

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Preferred citation:

[Identification of item], Steven Channing collection of February One recordings, David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Duke University.

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