Little Rock, Arkansas in 1957 the central high school was the first in the city to accept black students. It was an initial step in desegregation by the local school board and was greatly resisted
Nine black students eventually needed federal guards to protect them as they went about their lessons. At the end of the school year all the high schools were closed for over 12 months before they were finally integrated
In Nashville in 1960 hundreds of students, mobilised by the newly formed student non-violent co-ordinating committee, refused to leave whites-only lunch counters until they were served. A mass movement was built around the ensuing arrests.
The 'freedom riders' were
groups of blacks and whites who rode the interstate busses sitting in each others' seats, using each others' facilities at the bus depots en route. The outcry against the mob violence they met led to federal intervention and new laws.
In Mississippi the focus was voter registration. Thousands of disenfranchised blacks were organised into the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party which took the battle against segregation to the Democratic Party convention of 1964 -only to find they were prevented from replacing the southern racists as the genuine Democratic Party delegation.
The culmination of these years was a massive civil rights march in Alabama — protected by federal forces, but not before a previous much smaller march was brutally attacked by Alabama state police at the famous Edmund Pettus bridge.
Eyes on the prize powerfully recreates the atmosphere of the time, the uncertainty of the outcome, the bravery of ordinary people engaged in struggle and their growing pride in standing up for their rights. The reality of imminent violence is vividly described. Melba Beals, one of the Little Rock nine: 'On the first day we managed two hours before it became apparent that the mob was over-running the school. Policemen were throwing down their badges... would no
Eyes
on the prize
Martin Luther King:
emerged out of the
mass movement in
1955 as a leader of the civil rights
movement longer...protect us. [In the] principal's office...someone suggested that if they allowed the mob to hang one kid then they could get the rest out while they were doing it'.
In the event they all got out. But, even when Eisenhower assigned them federal guards for their protection, they were still regularly assaulted. 'Who is going to hit me with what? Is it going to be hot soup today?'
However, it was the white deaths (Goodman and Schwerher in Mississippi and the Reverend James Reeb in Alabama) that generated the most outrage in the north.
The 'liberal' Kennedys are shown torn between their public commitment to civil rights and their fear of alienating the white southern electorate. They equivocated endlessly until nationwide outcries against the violence forced federal initiatives.
The victories in the south marked the end of a stage in the struggle. Attention now began to switch to the north where formal civil rights were not the issue. The coalition between the various organisations started to break down in the face of the need to develop a strategy.
The story of the later years is at present being tackled by the same production team. It is to be hoped that they will deal with it as effectively as Eyes on the prize deals with the early rise and initial successes of the movement • SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 7 May/June 1988
From 23rd - 31st July — discuss and share experiences with hundreds of young revolutionaries from organisations like the JCR (France), JGS (Belgium), Rivoluzione (Italy), Rebel (Holland), JSR (Switzerland) and many more. In the Haute-Loire region of France — hear speakers from all over the world, including from Sinn Fein (Ireland), the Juquin campaign (France), FSLN (Nicaragua), PLO (Palestine), ANC (South Africa) and PRT (Mexico). As well as politics, there will be discos, a bar, swimming and other sports, videos, exhibitions, theatre, a rock concert and plenty of time for sunbathing. Plus vegetarian food, a women-only space and a creche. For more details contact Susan Williams, 75 Millers Road, Brighton, BN1 5NQ, before June 10th.
DAVID GRANT The Last Emperor, a film by Bernardo Bertolucci. OK, SO IT IS a great film. I mean, nine oscars can't be wrong, can they? Mind you, when you consider the opposition consisted of films like Moonstruck, one clip of which was enough to convince me to save my four quid, it's not surprising that Bernardo Bertolucci's latest, but by no means greatest, film swept all before it in Hollywood.
Apart from 'best supporting actor, of course, which inexplicably went to Sean Connery for his role in The Untouchables (a slick, sick, slice of gratuitous violence if ever there was one, replete with its pastiche of Eisenstein's pramdown-the-steps trauma in Battleship Potemkin, only this time with exploding headsgore-and-blood...) but I digress.
Vitorio Storaro's photography is the real mainstay of the film, as the action sweeps us back and forth across sixty years, and at least three different modes of
A film with very little to say production (depending on where you stand on the 'asiatic mode' debate and 'postcapitalist transitional society' issue).
His command of colour, the warm greens and yellows; splashing reds and cold, cynical blues, combine to produce a feast of visual signifers that the 'decoders' will, no doubt, have hours of amusement interpreting
The rest of us will simply lap it all up, courtesy of producer Jeremy Thomas' insistence that the Last Emperor be booked into the best "big screens' around the country.
But it's not just all spectacular interiors of the forbidden city, beautiful costumes and sets. Excellent performances by all the main characters set this film apart from and above ninety-nine per cent of the films you are likely to see on general release.
Then there is also the psycho-drama of Pu Yi. The plenipotentiary without power, the lord of ten thousand years who is never allowed to control his own destiny. A victim of his circumstances whilst ostensibly a man who should
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make history, Pu Yi is secluded from the world, successively by the imperial court, the Japanese imperialists and the Chinese communist party.
The film includes superbly observed vignettes: the surreal ancien regime in the imperial court; the decadence of life-asJapanese stooge, surrounded by jazz music, opium riddled relatives and androgenous kitsch; and finally, life as the humble, re-educated gardener, who witnesses his former warder humiliated by the fanatical red guards of the cultural revolution.
So what's the problem? Why the ironic tone of this review, you might ask? Well, two things really. First, this is not Bertolucci at his best. The sheer scale of the film, and no doubt its budget (reputedly loadsamoney) seem to have overwhelmed any incisive marxist or freudian insight, the most challenging and inspiring aspects of Bertolucci's previous work.
The film has very little to say. We have, it seems, come a long way since Jean Luc Goddard's protege denounced
the corrupting influence of tinseltown, making films that were banned by Italian censors (Last Tango) and forcibly reedited by irate producers (1900).
The second issue is the new image being projected from Beijing. Who better to create, in the cultural and artistic sphere, a film to parallel the new 'open' approach, wooing western interest and attention, than the marxist film maker with a human face, Bernardo Bertolucci?
After all, a regime that allows access to a western film maker to make a film which is honest and objective about many aspects of both pre-and post-revolutionary China must mark some sort of progress, mustn't it? And if we're ever going to really 'open up' (for this read Chinese markets to western capital, weapons and consumer goods), then we surely have to break down the barriers at a cultural and artistic level first, don't we?
Perhaps the latter point is unfair. But then life is, as Pu Yi would have no doubt concurred, sometimes like that •
TWENTY YEARS IN THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIALISM
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• Rally Fri 27 May with: • • DANIEL BENSAID • Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire — a well-known leader of the 1968 student revolt in France. • TARIQ ALI • Leader of the 1968 student movement in Britain, author and broadcaster. • TESSA VAN GELDEREN • Eye-witness to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. • MICHAEL FARRELL • A leader of the civil rights movement in Northern Ireland. 7.30pm Caxton House
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