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May
25, 2005
Will Radio Airs Student Documentary On School Desegregation;
Fundraising Dinner Honors Youth Media Workshop Participants
After Dereke Clements was chosen to leave his all-black school and take a school bus with other black children to the formerly all-white Lottie Switzer School in Champaign, he soon learned that desegregation was going to be harder than he expected. Whereas teachers at Booker T. Washington School had nurtured black children and looked out for them, many white teachers at the better-equipped Switzer talked harshly to black students and had low expectations for them.
“It was like night and day,” he said. Eventually, the move to desegregated schools was a positive one for him. “It was a great transition in terms of my growth, because it later gave me the feeling and the understanding that people are all the same.”
Clements is one of 14 former and current Champaign residents interviewed for a new radio documentary,
More Than a Bus Ride: Desegregating Champaign Schools, produced by African-American girls at Franklin Middle School as part of the Youth Media Workshop, a collaboration between WILL radio and Innovative Ed Consulting, Inc. The one-hour program airs at 5 p.m. Saturday, June 25, with a repeat at 6 p.m. Monday, June 27 and 2 p.m. Monday, July 4.
A gala fundraising dinner at 6 p.m. Saturday, June 18, at the Urbana Civic Center will honor participants in the Youth Media Workshop, while bringing in funds to keep the project going for a third year. The Youth Media Workshop teaches African-American youth how to make radio and TV documentaries that are then broadcast on WILL. Last year, a group of girls from Franklin produced a radio program focusing on the educational expectations, job experiences and community relationships of 14 local African-Americans. This year another group of 12 Franklin students, assisted by three peer educators from last year’s project, looked at the process of desegregation in Champaign schools through interviews with people who lived through the time and participated in the process. The program also begs the question, “Are African-American students better off today than they were before the schools were desegregated?"
The Franklin students interviewed members of the committee formed to head up desegregation of schools, as well as teachers, principals, parents and students from the 1960s. Interviewees talk about who formed the desegregation plan, why many black parents pushed hard for desegregation, how black students were selected to be the first to go to formerly white schools, and conflicts and friendships between white and black students and teachers.
Transcripts and raw tapes of the interviews will be donated to the Douglass Branch Library, The Early American Museum, the University of Illinois Archives and the Champaign County Historical Archives.
WILL’s Kimberlie Kranich, project co-director, said that the station believes it has found a way to help engage more African-American students in learning, and to raise the achievement level of participating students. Will Patterson, project co-director and founder of the Urbana media consulting firm Innovative Ed, said girls who helped produce the radio documentary the first year all made the honor roll, three for the first time, and teachers noticed an improvement in behavior at school of some of the girls who had had problems. Similar results are expected from this year’s students.
Veronica Martin, a ninth grader at Central High School who is one of the project peer educators, said the girls had been surprised at the intense interest black parents had in desegregating the schools. “They were really wanting their children to go to different schools,” she said. The students interviewed parents, such as Ruby Hunt, who braved boos and jeers to speak before the school board about why they favored desegregating schools. “It did take courage for most of us because the place was full – it was completely packed and there were a lot of white people in there,” Hunt told the students. “We let our voices be heard whether they wanted us to be heard or not.”
Tickets for the fundraising dinner are $30 and may be purchased in advance by contacting Valerie at WILL at 217-244-8128. Three women from the community, Diane Pye, Carol Mitchell and Linda Fox, volunteered to plan and coordinate the fundraiser and work with the girls on their personal development.
“Parents, teachers, mentors, church members, and neighbors, must start accentuating the positives because children want and need attention and if they don’t get it when they are doing positive things, then guess what?” said Pye. “These girls need to know that the Champaign-Urbana community respects what they are doing, and is proud of their hard work and dedication to the project,” said Mitchell.
More Than a Bus Ride: Desegregating Champaign Schools was made possible, in part, by a grant from the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Illinois General Assembly and the Unit 4 School District.
Contact:
Mary Barrineau
Public Information Coordinator
WILL AM-FM-TV
(217) 333-1070
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