You are going to watch part of a documentary and its source material instead of video lectures during Week 15, so stay tuned for that material and instructions on the response that you will write as Essay Three here.
Essay Three takes the place of your other “tasks” during the final two weeks of HIS 101, so there are no more quizzes, reflection posts, or discussion boards to complete.
Length: Two double-spaced pages.
This assignment is partly a written version of a discussion that we would have had in class about the docmentary series Eyes on the Prize and questions of how to remember and how to interpret the Civil Rights movement. Please watch the videos (they are external links because I cannot get them to embed properly in Blackboard).
First, watch the raw footage of the interviews conducted with John Lewis. Write a paragraph explaining your impression (from just the interviews with him) of who John Lewis was and what role he played in the Civil Rights movement. You do not need to watch the entire video — in class we would watch about ten minutes of it, but the library that has made the footage available online will only let me post a direct link to the entire interview. (Note: There is a transcript on the right side of the screen if you have trouble hearing or understanding the sound.)
http://repository.wustl.edu/concern/videos/vt150m28q
Second, write a paragraph explaining what you think the filmmakers are going to do with the interview footage. What (if anything) of what you watched do you expect to appear in the finished film. (Note: This is one episode from a series that ran for two series — the producers interviewed John Lewis twice and used parts of the footage in multiple episodes, so if you expected to see something from the interview here, it may have appeared in a different part of the series.)
Third, watch the episode “Ain’t Scared of Your Jails” (you may need to log in to your CSUDH library account again once you click the link). You do not need to watch the entire episode, but please watch at least ten minutes. The rest of your essay (roughly one page) should explain how the filmmakers used interviews (like what you watched with John Lewis) and other sources to create their documentary. How is watching the interview different from watching John Lewis (and others) as “talking heads” in a documentary film? Should filmmakers add more context (like including some of the questions they asked in their interviews?).
http://libproxy.csudh.edu/login?url=https://video.alexanderstreet.com/watch/ain-t-scared-of-your-jails-1960-1961