
          Teaching "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" in South_Carolina Schools
          By Raschke, DianeDiane Raschke
          Vol. 22, No. 2, 2000 p. 16
          
          On June 14-15, SRC consultant and former education programs director Marcia Klenbort conducted an in-depth workshop for teachers from across South_Carolina on using "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" in grades 6 through 12. Following the workshop, the article below, entitled "Distant Voices to Recount South's Civil Rights Clashes: Key Civil Rights Voices Come Alive for Local Students in a New Documentary" appeared in The State newspaper.
          More than 250 new voices will help some Columbia, South_Carolina, students learn about the Civil Rights Movement this fall.
          They belong to the men and women, both famous
and ordinary, who shaped civil_rights history in the South from 1940 to 1970. Framed by narrative and period music, they speak through an award-winning audio documentary that will soon be heard in four Columbia schools.
          Educators from all over the state, including four from Columbia, will pilot a new curriculum that complements the Southern_Regional_Council's "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?" civil_rights documentary. A June workshop at the South_Carolina Archives and History Center taught educators how to use the 13-hour series in the classroom.
          Gussie Tucker, a member of the WA Perry Middle
School Task Force, said first-person narratives make the series outstanding.
          "The emotions when they're talking are something
you can't see in a movie because other people are playing
the part," Tucker said. "This is a primary source. You can
hear and actually know what they were feeling, being part
of the Civil Rights Movement"
          Teachers from A.C. Flora High School, Keenan High School, Heathwood Hall Episcopal School, and Joseph Keels Elementary School will pilot the program in Columbia, and Tucker hopes to sell WA Perry teachers on it as well.
          The documentary has won several honors, including
the prestigious Peabody Award in 1998.
          The full title of the series is 'Will the Circle Be
Unbroken? An audio history of the Civil Rights Movement in five Southern communities and the music of those times."
          The communities are Montgomery, Alabama; little
Rock, Arkansas; Jackson, Mississippi; Atlanta. Georgia;
and Columbia, South_Carolina. Four of the series' twenty-six half-hour segments focus on the Midlands region of South_Carolina.
          The series includes the work of the Richland County
United Citizens' Committee in integrating Columbia's
schools; the Clarendon County segregation case, Briggs v. Elliot and the "Orangeburg Massacre," the 1968 incident in which state troopers fired op protesters at South_Carolina State University, killing three.
          This local connection is important, said Lalitha Shastri, a social studies teacher at Heathwood Hall.
          "That's away of saying to the kids that it happened on your doorstep," she said. "You're walking the streets where this happened, you're living in the area where this happened, you're living the legacy of this."
          Co-sponsors of the program with the Southern_Regional_Council are the South_Carolina Humanities Council and the state Department of Education.
          
            Diane Raschke wrote this article for The State newspaper based in Columbia, South_Carolina.
          
        
