Many people know the role that Rosa Parks or Martin Luther King Jr. played in the fight for civil rights. But what about Willena Cannon, a student at North Carolina A&T University who was arrested after protesting to integrate Greensboro’s businesses? Or Reverend Steve Allen, who founded one of the first African American law firms in Greensboro in 1979?
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro is bringing together the media studies and history departments with the university libraries to catalogue the visual histories of the activists who aren’t included in the way we retell the fight for civil rights. Host Frank Stasio is joined by three folks from UNC-Greensboro to learn more about “The Unsung Heroes of the Civil Rights Movement Visual History Project”: Matthew Barr is the co-director of the project, a professor in the department of media studies and an oral historian and documentary filmmaker; Torren Gatson is an assistant professor in the department of history who talks about student involvement, and Atigre’ Farmer is a recent graduate who interviewed some of the unsung heroes.
