|
|
|
|
|
|
Charles Kuralt
A Life On the Road
We did a story about a black family in the poorest part of Mississippi one time, the Chandlers. There were eight or nine children and the oldest of them decided he wanted to go to college, which had never happened in that family, I assure you. All his parents could do for him was hitch up the mule to the wagon -- they didn't own either the mule or the wagon -- and go into town and borrow two dollars for bus fare to send him off to college. From that beginning he became Dr. Cleveland Chandler, the head of the Department of Economics at Howard University. And, each of his younger brothers in sisters in turn went on to college, most of them to graduate degrees. There was a Baptist minister from Colorado and the head nutritionist of a veteran's hospital in Kansas City, people of accomplishment in every case. And, one of them wrote me a letter and said, "You really ought to come see us because we are something." Their parents' 50th anniversary was coming up, it happened also to be Thanksgiving Day. From all over America, all the children came back to the new house they had built to replace the shack they had grown up in. And, looking back on those days of picking cotton all summer to afford to go back to school, helping the younger brothers and sisters accomplish what they had accomplished and looking back on the humblest beginnings that any family could ever have, all we did all afternoon was cry.
View Interview with Charles Kuralt
View Biography of Charles Kuralt
View Profile of Charles Kuralt
View Photo Gallery of Charles Kuralt
|
|
Charles Kuralt
A Life On the Road
Mr. Chandler couldn't get through the blessing at the Thanksgiving dinner. I looked over at Izzy Bleckman, the camera man I worked with all these years and he was not able to look through the viewfinder of the camera and I was weeping too, everybody was. And, what were we weeping about? The American Dream, this notion that, if you really want to in a country like this, you can start from nothing and make a success of yourself. Maybe not a rich man or a rich woman, but a success. The kind of success that you look into your own heart and find is there. That is not possible in most countries of the world to this day, but it still is possible here. That's something very precious. I've kept up with the Chandlers. One of the grandchildren played violin in Carnegie Hall last year. It goes in circles. The dream doesn't stop. It makes me cry to think about it.
View Interview with Charles Kuralt
View Biography of Charles Kuralt
View Profile of Charles Kuralt
View Photo Gallery of Charles Kuralt
|
|
John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
"At times history and fate meet at a single place in man's unending search for freedom. So it was more than a century ago at Lexington and at Concord. So it was at Appomattox. So it was last week in Selma, Alabama." He condemned the violence in Selma, and he mentioned the fact that one good man, a man of God, was killed. Reverend James Reed, a white minister from Boston, had participated in a march on March 9th. And then the night of March 9th he went out to try to get something to eat with two or three other white ministers, and they were jumped and beaten by members of the Klan, and a day or so later he died at a local hospital in Birmingham. President Johnson recognized that, but before he closed that speech and introduced the Voting Rights Act he said, "We shall overcome." He said it more than once, "And we shall overcome." And he became the first President to use the theme song of the Civil Rights Movement in a major speech, and Dr. King was so moved he started crying, and we all cried a little when we heard Lyndon Johnson say, "And we shall overcome."
View Interview with John Lewis
View Biography of John Lewis
View Profile of John Lewis
View Photo Gallery of John Lewis
|
|
John Lewis
Champion of Civil Rights
I still talk about the Beloved Community. I still talk about the one America, one family, one house. The American house, the world house, we all live in the same house. Sometimes I feel like I've passed this way once before. I think the movement and what I went through during the height of the Civil Rights Movement prepared me to stand up and fight for what I think is right and fair and just, but it also prepared me to be patient in a sense, to take the long hard look. That the struggle to redeem the soul of America, to create the Beloved Community, or to bring about change, is not a struggle that lasts for one day or one month or one year, but is a struggle of a lifetime. So if you're trying to get a piece of legislation through the Atlanta City Council, or try to get a piece of legislation through the Congress, or try to change your fellow members to move to a certain -- you just keep working at it. You don't give up. You hang in there. And that's what we did during the height of the Civil Rights Movement, and that's what we continue to do today, for the fight is not just for today, but it's for tomorrow and the next year and years to come.
View Interview with John Lewis
View Biography of John Lewis
View Profile of John Lewis
View Photo Gallery of John Lewis
|
| |
|
