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• 1 2024-09-17T06:01:42+00:00 “Atlanta’s Image Is a Fraud”: Fragments of Black Protest in Local TV Newsfilm 3 image_header 2025-01-07T19:51:43+00:00

  by Brandy Monk-Payton

  Fordham University
  
  Abstract

  Introduction
  The Wake Work of Civil Rights Newsfilm
  Visually Documenting “An Appeal for Human Rights”
  A Window into Protest
  Looking for (Good) Trouble
  Conclusion

  Introduction

  Newsfilm from local television stations around the United States is a vital record of the civil rights movement. Its “historiographic capacity” allows the ability to encounter images of the Black freedom struggle differently and intervene in established discourse on midtwentieth-century African American activism.¹ Broadcasts of nonviolent protests in what Martin Luther King Jr. famously called the “glaring light of television” were important in cultivating a national consensus on racial discrimination and oppression. Yet seeing the raw footage of marches, rallies, pickets, and sit-ins captured by camera crews that was not transmitted to audiences at home provides an opportunity for viewers to access ephemeral periods of conflict and resistance. Such documentation generates alternative visual modes of apprehending processes of protest in public culture.

  This essay considers the archival collection in the Walter J. Brown Media Archive and Peabody Awards Collection at the University of Georgia. In particular, footage from WSB-TV—the call letters standing for “Welcome South, Brother”—showcases fragments of African American protest in the city of Atlanta and the surrounding region. Founded by James M. Cox, WSB debuted on September 29, 1948, and became the first television station in the entire US South. Radio reporter Jimmy Bridges gave the first televised newscast, and the station entertained audiences with daytime and prime-time variety programs. The Atlanta Constitution created a special TV issue that attested to the excitement about the new technology and the increased demand for sets in the home. By the mid-1950s, “television had captivated the imagination and culture of the state.”² A critical component of that captivation came from coverage of events such as school desegregation. As Caroline Bayne writes, “WSB’s news and local programming broadcasted the city’s navigation of the civil rights movement and integration” and desired to portray “Atlanta as a site of progress in a region generally associated with stagnation and resistance to change.”³ Indeed, Atlanta was seen as an emerging metropolis that distinguished itself from the racial extremism of other southern geographies in and outside the state. Its robust higher education system for African Americans cultivated a slew of leaders in business and politics. The city’s growing cosmopolitanism led Ivan Allen Jr., the mayor during the height of the fight against Jim Crow laws, to proclaim, “In Atlanta, the segregationists have been operating in a shrinking market for years.”⁴

  The WSB archives house a vast array of newsfilm that presents fragments of what can be viewed as the quotidian quality of protest in the city. A brief piece of footage from December 23, 1963, in particular, stands out as emblematic of the way in which the perception of Atlanta’s progressive status was contested by activists on the ground. The forty-second clip shows an interracial group demonstrating in front of a house in a wooded area. The scene is described as college students singing freedom songs and Christmas carols outside the residence of Mayor Allen.⁵ Though the footage has no audio, there are shots of the group chanting, clapping their hands, and stomping their feet in unison. Upon viewing the newsfilm, what strikes me is the large white paper banner held up by two African American men in front of the other demonstrators. It distinctly reads, in dark print using both upper- and lowercase letters, “Black is not a vice, nor is segregation a virtue, but Atlanta’s image is a fraud.” The display is provocative in its visual rhetoric. As a researcher, immediate questions come to mind: What prompted the use of this language? What image of Atlanta was circulating in public, and why did these college demonstrators denounce it as fraudulent?

  In this essay, I analyze select pieces of newsfilm recorded in Atlanta during the 1960s and ruminate on these moments of subjugation and resistance that never made it on air. I speculate on what these artifacts might reveal about urban crisis and its management. I am particularly interested in the mundane visuality of civic activism and the role of the unspectacular in sociopolitical unrest, which cultivates a kind of anticipatory witnessing that reframes archival possibility. Such work in the WSB archives contributes to the larger Accessible Civil Rights Heritage Project and the burgeoning field of Black digital humanities. In this way, I understand the close reading and annotating of such visual texts in an online database as what Kim Gallon terms a “‘technology of recovery,’ characterized by efforts to bring forth the full humanity of marginalized peoples through the use of digital platforms and tools.”⁶ I begin to reanimate particular scenes that could be construed as merely idle in order to glean the dynamic ecologies of protest in the city known for being “too busy to hate.” 

  The Wake Work of Civil Rights Newsfilm

  I see my methodological orientation toward viewing and analyzing this raw footage that was never broadcast as striving to realize a form of “wake work,” as Christina Sharpe defines it. Specifically, I am drawn to her discussion of “Black annotation” as a way of “reading and seeing something in excess of what is caught in the frame.”⁷ An annotation is a note, a kind of metadata that provides an explanation of an original piece of data. A Black annotation of civil rights newsfilm can serve a reparative function that challenges and begins to rewrite the established record of Black social and political life under duress. Such presentational markups can illustrate the visual vernacular of newsfilm as a valuable historical resource to gain new knowledge of African American protest. 

  The descriptions of content within the WSB collection already provide detailed summaries of what transpired in front of the camera, which bolster my own close readings of the material. While the captioning includes ample context of the newsfilm clips, I am also interested in the aesthetic style of the footage that makes use of different camera techniques like pans and tracking shots as well as abrupt transitions and discontinuous takes. My textual analysis of the clips relies on an engagement with that which is performative and affective, emanating not only from the bodies on display but also the environments they inhabit. I gather visual information about the sociohistorical actors in the frame by relying on their stances, gestures, facial expressions, and speech patterns, if applicable. Indeed, much of the newsfilm that I examine in the archive is silent. Though there is a lack of audio, I still listen to the moving images and what they might convey about the sonic frequencies of protest and its management.⁸

  The WSB footage that I gravitate toward focuses on instances of local protest. National news coverage of direct action tactics such as sit-ins tends to emphasize the drama of the scenes of civil disobedience by the college activists. Indeed: “The image beamed across America on nightly news programs was profound: doves were being attacked by wolves. Observers were moved and amazed by the personal sacrifice and dignity displayed by the students.”⁹ For example, Sasha Torres has written extensively about the December 1960 prime-time documentary telecast NBC White Paper: “Sit-In,” which focused on direct action tactics in Nashville, Tennessee. The program packaged a story about the inevitability of integration through its retrospective framework.¹⁰ The newsfilm from the local Atlanta TV station gives a glimpse into what can be in excess of the constructed national narrative. Footage of protestors walking down streets and standing outside of storefronts can be considered “indexical materials that have not yet been in a position to be remembered, let alone forgotten.”¹¹ Such footage reflects a liminal space of preparation for possible confrontation. What can we glean from these slow TV moments of lingering and waiting in the modern urban landscape? What are the temporal and spatial registers of political demand? Similar to how Mark Williams writes of the “fugitive potential” of the KTLA newsfilm of the Eula Love demonstration at Parker Center in June 1979, these moments captured in Atlanta are brimming with opportunity for scholars to harness the visual energy of African American enactment of protest.¹² In addition, looking at b-roll of white local and state leaders convening press conferences and assemblies proves instructive, as such footage is indicative of their preoccupation with the city’s pristine image. All of these local scenes can provide a different record of events and allow for speculation and, perhaps, fabulation about the relationship between the multiple individual and collective agents involved in the Black freedom struggle.  

  Visually Documenting “An Appeal for Human Rights”

  In order to delve into an exploration of the modes of early civil rights protest that WSB captured with its cameras, it is important to situate them within their sociohistorical context. Much of the activism against segregation in Atlanta was spurred by college students and the newly founded Committee on the Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR). Created in February 1960, COAHR consisted of students affiliated with the Atlanta University Center (a cohort of six historically Black colleges and universities that includes Clark, Morehouse, and Spelman). It paid for an advertisement in the Atlanta Constitution and other city newspapers on March 9, 1960, titled “An Appeal for Human Rights.” The published ad argued:

  We want to state clearly and unequivocally that we cannot tolerate in a nation professing democracy and among people professing democracy and among people professing Christianity, the discriminatory conditions under which the Negro is living today in Atlanta, Georgia—supposedly one of the most progressive cities in the South.¹³

  At the outset, the four-page manifesto seeks to highlight inequality and injustice in Atlanta, pointing to the city’s purported reputation as politically distanced from the traditional conservatism of the South. It details grievances associated with education, jobs, housing, voting, hospitals, entertainment, and law enforcement that have all spurred students to nonviolent protest in order to “secure full citizenship rights as members of this great Democracy of ours.”¹⁴ Inspired by the nationally publicized student-led sit-ins in Greensboro, North Carolina, in February 1960, COAHR telegraphed its plans for direct action in the city.

  The WSB archive contains unaired footage of the government reaction to the student activists’ advertisement. On the same day that it was published, the governor of Georgia, Ernest Vandiver, and the mayor of Atlanta, William B. Hartsfield (who preceded Allen) gave a filmed response to the document.¹⁵ The newsfilm audio cuts out at times, and some of each response seems not to have been recorded. At the beginning of the eight-minute clip, Vandiver is seen directly addressing the camera while reading from a prepared statement. His cadence is measured as he refers to the ad as a “left-wing statement” that is “calculated to breed dissatisfaction, discontent, discord, and evil.” He calls for those “who would cause hatred, strife, and discord” to “cease and desist” in their plans to protest, which he believes is harmful and will be of no benefit to anyone. 

  The film then cuts to a close-up of Hartsfield, who also provides a statement. The mayor rehearses the popular refrain about Atlanta’s distinctive image, commenting that it is “a city which proudly proclaims to the world that it is too busy making progress to tear itself apart in bitter hatreds, recriminations, or any destructive violence.” His voice punctuates every word to emphasize this branding of Atlanta, which will come to be contested in three years, as I examine later in this essay. Nevertheless, Hartsfield applauds the ad, which he says does “perform a constructive service” of letting the city’s white community know what the African American population is thinking. 

  He admits that he was “particularly glad” about something when the film cuts out and returns to Vandiver, who refers to the statement and says without any evidence: “Obviously it was not written by students. Regrettably, it had the same overtones which are usually found in anti-American propaganda pieces.” Asserting the importance of personal responsibility, he argues that “human rights can only come through individual initiative and individual accomplishment.” The governor refutes charges of inequality and injustice in Atlanta by listing the educational opportunities available to African Americans in the city and their increased status as urban professionals. He refers to the demonstrations, sit-ins, and other acts of civil disobedience as “unorthodox and unacceptable methods” of engagement. The clip concludes with additional comments by Mayor Hartsfield. He believes the city has “at least tried to be of goodwill towards all our citizens, to preserve an atmosphere of harmony and when we move, to move in the right direction.” There is a repetition of an earlier portion of the clip in which his earlier cut-off sentence is cleanly transmitted: he was “particularly glad to see the promise of non-violence and of a peaceful approach.”

  It is not clear whether Vandiver and Hartsfield are filmed in the same location at the same time of day. But the juxtaposition of the two authority figures on newsfilm serves to highlight the difference in their physical demeanor and tone of voice. While the Georgia governor is judgmental, the Atlanta mayor seems more affable. There is a stark contrast in their opinions about the advertisement. Hartsfield expresses appreciation for its existence, while Vandiver chastises and condemns its language. Hartsfield is sympathetic to the Black student activists, and Vandiver calls them irresponsible. Though the statements were not broadcast, the two government responses are examples of different rhetorical techniques to manage crisis. 

  Students began organized sit-ins and pickets in several downtown Atlanta locations on March 15, though there does not seem to be a moving image record of these initial demonstrations in the WSB archives. COAHR worked with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to organize direct actions in Atlanta and created a fall campaign that would focus on protesting at specific businesses. On October 19, 1960, a reporter interviews King about his arrest during a sit-in at Rich’s Department Store—Atlanta’s largest retailer.¹⁶ The short clip allows the civil rights leader to explain the necessity for integration to happen in the “hardcore South”: “We feel that if the progress is to be meaningful progress, it must include the deep South, including Atlanta. And I’m sure that with the reasonable climate in Atlanta, it is possible to desegregate lunch counters without any real difficulty and the transition could be a very smooth one.” King affirms the widespread perception of the environment in Atlanta as amenable to change. The entire shot is set against a white wall, and King, in his white button-down shirt and tie, visually dominates the white male journalist that appears at the edge of the frame on the right. He rarely looks at the unidentified reporter when answering questions; instead, his gaze is directed toward the camera in a defiant stare. Here, King exemplifies the figure of the dignified “civil rights subject” who is able to communicate the plight of Black Americans and their efforts to desegregate to a wide audience. Student activists used the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) leader for publicity to gain visibility for their cause.

  Three days after King’s arrest, Mayor Hartsfield arranged a month-long truce to allow for negotiations between student activists and business leaders in the city. When no agreement on the desegregation of public facilities was reached, demonstrations resumed in and outside of various department stores and restaurants.¹⁷ WSB captured a variety of these nonviolent protests in downtown Atlanta in a series of silent newsfilms that are dated November 25, 1960. The recorded moments of collective action and inaction serve up a visual aesthetic of Black calm, cool, and collectedness in the long fight for integration. In one clip, the description states, “African American students from the Atlanta University Center leave the campus of Morris Brown College to picket segregated stores in downtown Atlanta, Georgia.”¹⁸ The students march toward a building at the college. A young Black man in what looks to be a newsboy hat stands outside smoking and briefly glances at the camera. As the marching students turn a corner, they are smiling and seem to be in good spirits. Five Black students—three women huddled together on the left and two men on the right—stand on the steps of a building and stare at the camera. A group of students, including a white man and white woman, are seen vocalizing as they walk past parked cars and across a street. Onlookers take in the sight. In particular, the clip focuses on an African American woman wearing an apron who stands in a storefront with her arms crossed. She grins at the camera as it cuts from a medium shot to a close-up.

  Perhaps the woman is an employee of the store. She could be a cook or a waitress on a break from work. She seems awed by the demonstration. What might the act of witnessing provoke for her? The clip then turns to students organizing and handing out picket signs. Slogans on signs include “Don’t buy here” and “Wear old clothes with new dignity don’t buy here.” The students continue to line up and walk, and at one point, a number of them near a curb begin to wave to someone or something off-camera. A low-angle shot of the Morris Brown clock tower reads 11:55. The camera captures from above demonstrators who march in pairs on a sidewalk alongside a highway that is described as headed downtown. The signs carried by the students read “Rich’s sells segregation” and “Don’t buy at Rich’s.” 

  An additional clip is a clear extension of this busy November day, as it begins with the familiar tree-lined landscape of the Morris Brown College campus, but from another perspective.¹⁹ Students are again shown walking in unison and smiling excitedly at the camera. Multiple intersections in downtown Atlanta are presented to set the stage for the picket lines. Students walk in front of a store, carrying signs with slogans like “Khrushchev can eat here????” that attest to the humor that can also be exhibited in protest. Other picket signs seen throughout the clip include “Stay away—segregation sold here,” “The presence of segregation is the absence of democracy Jim Crow must go!”, and “America! Stand Up for Equality.” An African American man who carries a “Don’t buy segregation” sign while chewing gum briefly glances down at the camera in front of him as he confidently saunters by a store. In contrast, three Black women without posters stand a bit timidly in front of an ornate store display at Butler’s Shoes. One holds a clipboard close to her chest.  

  Finally, a newsfilm reel presents protestors participating in a sit-in and a picket line at McCrory’s and F. W. Woolworth, stores also located in downtown Atlanta.²⁰ The camera documents the hustle and bustle of the shopping and dining district. The recording begins from across a street with a glimpse of two African American men and two African American women. They are communicating, perhaps strategizing, with each other. There are other shots of Black people milling about outside of establishments and occasionally entering them. At least two protestors carry signs outside of McCrory’s. Inside an unidentified store, a sit-in takes place with what appears to be little fanfare. The clip then cuts back to an exterior shot of protestors holding signs and walking single file on the sidewalk. The camera tracks down the line of individuals quickly until it reaches a Black woman holding a sign with the slogan “Don’t pay to be segregated.” The film slows down and fixates on her purposeful gait. She is stoic in her graceful protest.

  This woman never looks at who is filming her, and I am interested in these moments of visible determination where Black folks are not beholden to the camera’s gaze. They are purposeful in their choreography as they become part of the fabric of the urban environment as (extra)ordinary denizens of Atlanta. 

  A Window into Protest

  The WSB newsfilm collection does not contain much footage of protest from 1961 and 1962, and the dearth of moving image content speaks to parts of the archive that are still outside of the grasp of historical visual record. Notably, Hartsfield ended his tenure as mayor, and Allen succeeded him after beating out restaurant owner and staunch segregationist Lester Maddox in 1961. A series of protests in 1963 attempted to integrate different Atlanta restaurants, such as Leb’s, S&W Cafeteria, Toddle House, and Maddox’s own dining establishment, Pickrick. All throughout the newsfilm of direct actions such as pickets and sit-ins, the camera operators visualize the spatiality of protest with wide shots and pans that showcase the daily cityscape. Yet there are also moments that eradicate the distance of protest and bring the viewer closer to encounter and potential confrontation. Over and over in the footage, I notice the glass windowpanes that protect these stores that will be flooded with demonstrators. What kind of indexical evidence do these windows provide? What might they reflect and refract about civil disobedience? 

  On May 20, 1963, both Black and white student activists protest segregation at Leb’s Restaurant and S&W Cafeteria.²¹ This clip is divided into two segments, one that is three minutes long and one that is forty-five seconds. Both segments seem to capture, perhaps at different times, a scuffle at the entrance of an establishment between the crowd of interracial demonstrators wanting to be let in and the white men attempting to keep them out. There is shoving as the activists attempt to make their way through the door. The first clip shows a police officer yelling at the demonstrators. There are shots of them waiting outside near the store. The camera cuts to a broken door window, and it is not clear when it was destroyed or by whom. One prominent white male demonstrator takes a purposeful stance in front of the door. The reflections of the activists are seen in the windows. The camera moves from behind around the activists who strategically guard the entrance and briefly captures their faces through a low-angle shot from the front. A physical altercation occurs in the crowd, and a Black male student seems to get up from the ground; relief is registered on his face as a white male ally grips him on the neck reassuringly. In the second clip, an activist is purposefully hit across the face. The camera records the same Black male student, who has fallen to the ground, and captures him huddled on the pavement attempting to shield his head. Both of these clips, as well as many others, testify to the propensity for direct action situations to escalate at any given moment and highlight the tension in the atmosphere.

  An additional piece of newsfilm seems to be an extension of this protest in May, though it is dated as possibly being recorded on June 9, 1963. It consists of another interracial group that is attempting to integrate S&W Cafeteria.²² They are all walking separately, with the exception of one Black woman in a light-colored floral sleeveless dress who has her arm around the waist of a white man. They approach the establishment and crowd the entrance. A white man in glasses inside the restaurant seems to panic, pushing some of the individuals away and attempting to close the door. The same Black woman is then shown with her arms draped around two other white male demonstrators. This is an astonishing moment of intimacy and trust; though the shot is taken from the back, over their shoulders, it is clear that the trio are demanding to be let into the restaurant. As the standoff continues, older white patrons exit and look on disapprovingly. Bystanders on the sidewalk express interest in what is transpiring in front of them. The camera cuts to a shot of what looks to be another broken door window, or is it the same one from the previous footage? This image is darker, but reflections of legs are visible in the frame as the sunlight bounces off the cracked glass. At another moment, the camera pans down a line of demonstrators from the back. Their faces are not shown, but the camera lingers on their midsections—they all seem to be holding hands in solidarity. Later, there is another angle of this showdown from the front, depicting the visually quiet antagonism between the two contrasting sides. These exterior shots of Black (and white) patience in protest are vital to developing a more complete picture of the fraught impact of activism in the city. 
  An actual sit-in is documented in December at a Toddle House restaurant.²³ The camera captures the establishment’s hanging signage, which reads, “Food You Enjoy.” Inside the restaurant, Black activists, including Stokely Carmichael, sit at one end of the lunch counter while white patrons sit at the other end. The description from the database adds: “While the protesters appear to wait for service, an African American photographer takes pictures, and a white policeman watches the group. A white man, possibly a restaurant manager, speaks to the students sitting at the counter one by one and pushes a microphone away.”²⁴ This resistance to being recorded, ostensibly by a reporter, is the only moment of physical confrontation caught on this newsfilm. A young African American man stands near two white men who are eating at a booth. Though it is not clear whether the demonstrators are being served, they are alert and even jovial in the moment. Outside the restaurant and amid a law enforcement presence, an interracial group of students sing and clap their hands while an Atlanta police vehicle pulls into a parking lot. Multiple cop cars appear throughout this newsfilm. The footage cuts to show the same sequence of events from a different vantage point behind the counter. The clip then records a second Toddle House location, where the camera captures a white male employee seeming to guard the door of the restaurant. He looks around in anticipation of the demonstrators who will soon begin to crowd the entrance and sidewalk. Policemen are once again shown supervising the scene of protest. Though it is not documented, one c]ould infer that the scenes resulted in arrests for violating the city’s trespassing laws.

  To return to the piece of newsfilm that inspired the title of this essay, it becomes clear that what transpires on the day before Christmas Eve in 1963 is a culmination of the prior direct actions that happened over the course of that year, as well as the arrest of twenty-one activists at a Toddle House that occurred over the previous weekend. An article from the Atlanta Constitution notes that the demonstrators’ unannounced visit to the mayor’s home was another attempt at registering their grievances. Though it does not seem to have been recorded, Mayor Allen talked to the crowd for several minutes. Temperatures that day were said to be below freezing, a fact not apparent from the energy of the student activists on newsfilm.²⁵ In good spirits, they are said to have sung carols as well as freedom songs. With the incisive commentary on the large white banner mentioned earlier that “Black is not a vice, nor is segregation a virtue, but Atlanta’s image is a fraud,” the students seem to be keenly aware of the perception of the city legitimated by government officials such as Mayor Allen and use morally charged language to critique racial injustice. As Kevin M. Kruse argues of the entire student political agenda during this time, “instead of helping to promote Atlanta’s positive image, the students shrewdly sought to use that image—and its contrast with reality—to achieve their ends.”²⁶ Their own lived experiences as countermemory push back on the idea that Atlanta could be seen as a utopia for Black Americans.

  Looking for (Good) Trouble

  The new year brought a large-scale incident of violence to the city, and while the WSB archives do not seem to have footage of the trouble in late January 1964, they do have a record of the aftermath presented in the form of an attempted administrative management of a crisis that threatened the peaceful image of the city with respect to race relations. The archival description contextualizes the events of the protest at length:

  A series of demonstrations organized by members of SNCC and COAHR that had elevated in intensity since December of 1963. The most disruptive of these protests took place on Sunday, January 26 at segregated Leb’s Restaurant in downtown Atlanta, where picketers had attracted approximately one thousand white spectators, some of whom were members of the Ku Klux Klan. Clashes between civil rights demonstrators, spectators, and restaurant personnel resulted in the injury of several demonstrators and police officers, property damages to the restaurant, and the blocking of street traffic.²⁷

  On January 27, Fulton County solicitor general William T. Boyd made a statement before cameras about the unrest. He is wearing glasses and a bowtie and seated inside what looks to be a sparsely furnished office that includes a typewriter at the desk and a file cabinet in the background. Boyd slightly flubs his line at the beginning, and someone is heard telling him to start from the beginning. He reads from prepared remarks and looks at the camera frequently: “Tragedy, bloodshed and death were narrowly averted in the streets of Atlanta this past weekend. That some persons of both races, white and Negro, escaped serious and possibly fatal injuries was the merest accident and I thank God for that accident.” The audio cuts out before it starts again with Boyd in midsentence stating that the African American demonstrators,

  mostly students and young people met in open conflict with white people during their efforts to be served in a downtown restaurant. Picture Atlanta nationally as a city of violence. Where the police themselves admit that they almost lost control. It is a distorted picture, a false picture, which does not show the harmony with which our Negro and white citizens have worked to improve the lot of both races here.

  Boyd attempts to warn of an ensuing negative image of Atlanta that he refutes as inaccurate. He is also keenly aware of his own appearance as a city official with power. At one point, Boyd stops speaking and asks the cameraman, “How was it, alright?” He grabs a cigarette and begins to smoke. An off-screen voice responds, “Very good.” 

  Two days later, on January 29, 1964, Mayor Allen addressed an assembly of Black and white community members about the recent, increasingly volatile desegregation demonstrations in Atlanta.²⁸ In an introductory moment, Allen stands at the podium with his prepared remarks. He states, “I have asked you to meet here this afternoon to help evaluate and work out a solution to a situation which threatens not only the good name, but beyond that, even the public safety of this city.” The clip breaks and skips to another section of Allen’s address, where he says:

  Atlanta's tolerance has been almost unlimited. Atlanta’s desire for every citizen to have liberty, freedom, and equal rights is unabated. Atlanta will not slow down or stop in its efforts to work out solutions to all problems of racial relations. That is the course of action to which Atlanta has been and shall continue to be committed.

  Inside City Hall, Mayor Allen speaks to a room full of mostly white men, though Black civil rights workers are present. Various shots of the audience are interspersed throughout the clip as several Atlanta business and community leaders speak to the audience from the standing microphone. Reading from a prepared statement, Mayor Allen says, “This irresponsible element that chooses to assume threatening posture and attack our city destructively will find that they cannot undermine Atlanta’s solid foundation of fairness and freedom built so patiently over many years by men and women of good sense and good will of both races.” The sound drops out at the end of his statement. After shots of the audience, there is a cut to the SNCC executive secretary, James Forman, at the podium in the front. He comments:

  There is no malice in the hearts of anyone who adheres to the principle of nonviolence against a particular individual; in fact, we love our white brothers even though they make it difficult for us to love. We even love the Ku Klux Klan that was demonstrating against us, even though they may not understand that—

  He is interrupted by Mayor Allen. The camera swish pans and zooms out to show that Allen is behind Forman to his right, a few feet away. Allen reminds Forman that because he is extending him the courtesy to speak, he should remain on the topic at hand. Forman defends his speech by replying:

  Well, I am speaking to the subject, because the subject involves the rationale of the demonstrations in the city of Atlanta. Some of us have been called irresponsible, and I think it’s necessary for the city of Atlanta at this moment to understand some of the reservoir which produces the need for demonstrations.

  The sound drops out at the end of Forman’s statement. It is not clear whether he continued to speak. 

  Shots from the newsfilm clip appear to be compiled out of order, and the audio goes in and out frequently. Ultimately, Mayor Allen proposes a thirty-day moratorium on desegregation demonstrations, which is noted as unsuccessful. The passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in July required Atlanta restaurants to integrate by federal law, but Maddox refused to comply. He was present in the room with the mayor during the address at City Hall and is seen raising his hand to speak. Maddox continued to be a vocal critic of integration, and in another newsfilm from January 1965, he is seen in violent confrontation with potential Black patrons. A description of the footage reads: “On January 29, 1965, Reverend Charles E. Wells Sr. and three other African American men were denied service at the Lester Maddox Cafeteria, where they were verbally accosted and physically shoved away, in some cases with axe handles, by white patrons of the restaurant.”²⁹ Maddox is extremely combative in the clip and lunges at one of the Black men, aggressively pushing him away from the establishment and almost into the street.

  He also seems to have an ax in his right hand, and the description reads further that “Maddox adopted the axe handle as a symbol of his resistance to desegregation, and sold souvenir axe handles, dubbed ‘Pickrick drumsticks’ to his segregationist supporters, in whose eyes he had become a folk hero.”³⁰ Maddox would become governor of Georgia in 1967 and serve one term. He appears throughout the WSB newsfilm collection, with his distinctive balding head and dark glasses, as a visual antagonist in every frame.

  In contrast, another folk hero’s presence in the archive is an emblematic image of what he would later call “good trouble”—politician and civil rights activist John Lewis, who died on July 17, 2020, in Atlanta. Lewis was chairman of SNCC from 1963 to 1966 and went on to serve in Georgia’s Fifth Congressional District for the US House of Representatives from 1987 until his death. Lewis also has distinctive facial features, and his short stature is hard to miss in newsfilm. To my eye’s delight, he is seen sitting in the restaurant at the lunch counter in one of the pieces of footage I studied. He speaks to a reporter, though his comments are not audible. He also appears caroling outside of the mayor’s home in December 1963. He can be seen in the crowd of students clapping and singing, but his body is not turned toward the camera. Lewis had been arrested a day earlier and was held with other demonstrators on a $100 bond. He is revived in the archive, and locating him in these moving images in transient moments of resistance attests to his spectral star status.

  The final newsfilm clip that I want to analyze is one from May 23, 1966, that also includes Lewis. It shows members of SNCC holding a press conference in which they discuss their interest in moving beyond the promises of integration associated with the civil rights movement and toward an ethos of Black Power.³¹ A three-shot captures Carmichael, Ruby Doris Smith Robinson, and Lewis sitting behind a table answering questions. While Lewis is not shown speaking in the clip, Carmichael states: “When we talk about integration in this country, it’s always been initiated by the black community. After we’ve initiated that action, we were beaten and jailed and we went through a period of suffering and after that period of suffering we were redeemed.” 

  In another shot at another location, Robinson is shown in close-up, bright lights shining on her face. She states that Black people “have to build independent of the white community” and further relays that she has always been against integration because “integration in this country has always been a process in which negroes try to become a part of white society.” Both Carmichael and Robinson argue that the actual goal is for African Americans to define themselves and cultivate their own critical consciousness and power. This press conference is an insightful early account of philosophies associated with the Black Power movement as an outgrowth of the realization for some Black Americans that the championing of integration during the civil rights era was a ruse. 

  Conclusion

  As with many television stations around the country, the topic of race became integral to the coverage of WSB, which called itself the “Eyes of the South.” Fifteen years after the Atlanta channel’s historic opening broadcast, reporters set out to document the Black freedom struggle, though the vast majority of this footage never made it on air. A readily available and functional database of civil rights newsfilm can “shift collective imagination” of the experience of the fight for racial justice.³² The examination of such local television footage creates a wider aperture through which to envision protest beyond the singularity of the nationally transmitted media event that placed a burden of liveness on African American activists. This online recovery project of mostly mundane scenes is especially in line with how “black digital humanities provides a forum for thinking through the ways that black humanity emerges, submerges, and resurfaces in the digital realm.”³³ The Walter J. Brown Media Archive and Peabody Awards Collection is a historiographical treasure trove of quotidian expressions of communal participation and deliberation in civic life. These perspectives from local stations, carefully categorized in the archive, “provide access to a granular degree of visual news gathering practices and historical representations that were likely never before available or even imagined to exist by social and media historians.”³⁴ Crucially, the rich metadata allows scholars to make vital connections across newsfilm material. In doing this kind of wake work, I was able to illuminate visual patterns of performance over the span of multiple pieces of footage. I became invested in exploring how WSB captured direct action tactics in Atlanta during the 1960s and discovered that these forms of protest consisted of an amalgamation of different kinds of urban encounters between various constituencies: Black and white activists, business owners, and bystanders. What’s more, government officials who were preoccupied with the city’s reputation attempted to manage the unrest through their public responses captured on camera. Thus, the newsfilm collection contributes to an understanding of how the image of Atlanta as a progressive southern city was constantly being made and unmade in this visual ecology of activism. 
  
  A list of links relevant to this essay can be found here.³⁵
  
  Brandy Monk-Payton is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Communication and Media Studies and affiliated faculty in the Dept. of African & African American Studies at Fordham University. Her research focuses on the theory and history of African American media representation and cultural production across television, film, and digital media. Her work has been published in edited collections such as Unwatchable and Black Cinema & Visual Culture: Art and Politics in the 21st Century, as well as the journals Film Quarterly, Feminist Media Histories, Celebrity Studies, and Communication, Culture and Critique. She has also been featured on NPR's All Things Considered and PBS NewsHour. She is currently writing a book on Black Lives Matter and television.
  
  Title Image: WSB-TV newsfilm clip of students singing freedom songs and Christmas carols in front of the home of Ivan Allen Jr., mayor of Atlanta, Georgia, December 23, 1963. wsbn45946, WSB Newsfilm collection, reel WSBN1128, Walter J. Brown Media Archives and Peabody Awards Collection, University of Georgia Libraries, Athens, as presented in the Digital Library of Georgia.
  
  “Atlanta’s Image Is a Fraud”: Fragments of Black Protest in Local TV Newsfilm © 2025 by Brandy Monk-Payton is licensed under CC BY 4.0.
  
  The Journal of e-Media Studies is published by the Dartmouth Library.