For many years I taught at NYU’s Journalism School, and one of the classes I taught was about television and the Civil Rights Movement
Racism in America, instutional racism – the kind of racism that was enforced by Bull Connors, police dogs, fire hoses and lynchings had been an American staple since the end of the Civil War.
As slavery had been called the ‘peculiar institution’, so racism might have been called ‘the secret institution’.
That secret came to an end in the 1960s, when television cameras first headed south and showed the ugly side of racism to an America that preferred to remain unknowning.
Once the secret was out in the open, it was difficult, if not impossible to defend any longer.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZWdDI_fkns[/youtube]