Democracy Now! (3/3/18)

As a student-led movement for gun control sweeps the country, we look back at a key moment in another historic student movement: desegregation.

“As I look at these young people I think back on those days and I think their time has come to pick up the baton looking for justice and freedom.”

On January 9, 1961, African-American students Charlayne Hunter and Hamilton Holmes walked onto the campus of the University of Georgia to register for classes, as a howling mob of white students screamed racial epithets at them. It was a pivotal moment in the African-American student-led movement to desegregate America’s public high schools and universities. Charlayne Hunter graduated in 1963 and went on to have an award-winning career in journalism, working for PBS, NPR and CNN.

For more, we speak with Charlayne Hunter-Gault, award-winning journalist and author of numerous books, including “In My Place,” a memoir of her childhood and her years at the University of Georgia. Her recent piece for The New Yorker is headlined “Surviving School Desegregation, and Finding Hope in #NeverAgain.”

Link to Story, Transcript and 9-Minute Video

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Legendary Journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault Reflects On The Day She Desegregated The University Of Georgia

Democracy Now! (3/3/18)

Even as racial justice protests have swept the nation in recent years, a new report finds the gains of the civil rights movement have stalled—and in some cases lost ground—over the past half-century. Among the report’s findings: School segregation is on the rise, white supremacist movements are becoming emboldened and more violent, and child poverty has increased—from 15.5 percent in 1968 to 21 percent today. The report comes on the 50th anniversary of a report by the Kerner Commission, which was assembled by President Lyndon Johnson in the wake of uprisings by African Americans in Newark and Detroit. The commission concluded that the United States was “moving toward two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”

For more on the civil rights movement’s legacy, the student movements for gun control today, and her own pivotal role in the student-led movement to desegregate U.S. public schools and universities, we talk to legendary broadcast journalist Charlayne Hunter-Gault.

Link to Story, Transcript and Story