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Documentarian honored with professorship
Callie Crossley brings experience to campus
By Allison Bailey
abaile19@mscd.edu

Photo by Jason Small • jsmall4@mscd.edu Callie Crossley at a communtiy reception honoring Rachel B. Noel.

“Keep your eyes on the prize, hold on, hold on,” encourage the lyrics from one of the most powerful anthems of the civil rights movement.

The documentary Eyes on the Prize took its name from the song and was produced by Callie Crossley, the 2007 Rachel B. Noel Distinguished Visiting Professor at Metro.

Crossley is a broadcast journalist, filmmaker, producer, public speaker and commentator. She visited Metro Feb. 5 to 7 to receive the professorship and talk about the civil rights movement and various media issues.

“We called what happened, the civil rights movement, the second American Revolution,” Crossley said.

She stressed the importance of understanding that the civil rights movement completely transformed the way American social justice movements would evolve in the future.

“The anti-war movement, the women’s movement, most recently the gay rights movement and certainly immigration are all based on the tactics, the strategy and the effort of the civil rights movement,” she said.

And it worked.“When people tell you that public protest doesn’t matter, well, they’re wrong. It does matter. It takes a long time. You have to hang in there. You have to be committed. You have to determine that this is a cause bigger than myself,” she said.

The idea of such violence as occurred during the civil rights movement over people wanting to secure the right to register to vote – not even to actually vote, but just to register – disgusted Crossley.

“The level of anger and hostility that it took to beat children, women, old people, young people with no weapons … who were … trying to register to vote,” was atrocious, she said.

The freedoms won during the civil rights movement should not be forgotten.

“I have no patience for people who do not vote,” Crossley said.

The civil rights movement helped to create and pass into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

“(The Voting Rights Act) has been in the news again because there are some provisions of it that people keep trying to undermine,” Crossley said.

President George Bush signed a 25-year extension of the act on July 27, 2006.

The matter of violence from the civil rights era is not over, according to Crossley, as many of the murders from the era still remain at large.

“I think they should be humiliated,” she said. “Track them down. I don’t care how old they are.”

Crossley likened the prosecution of these unnamed killers to Nazi war criminals who are still being sought today.

“These people need to be named,” Crossley said. “They have gotten away with murder, literally.”

Along with sharing her extensive knowledge of the civil rights movement, Crossley, who has had a distinguished career as a journalist, discussed media issues as well.

Race issues are still a problem in the world of media, according to Crossley. The ability for minorities to rise to the top and the lack of diversity in newsrooms are both problems that remain.

“When you have many voices, then you stop a lot of misperceptions and misunderstanding,” Crossley said. “It’s really important for the teams that go out to report for the nation, and for the communities to reflect the communities.”

Consolidation of media companies is also a media problem, she said, pointing out that five corporations currently own the vast majority of U.S. media.

Crossley thinks that as long as there is an independent media and smaller media companies not owned by the large corporations, secrets will not be kept.

A lack of Internet regulation will help keep alternative voices flowing, she said, and help reporting on issues that are not covered or skewed by large media sources.

A lack of official sources is also “a real problem,’ Crossley said. “If I can’t guarantee that if you talk to me that I am going to protect you and not have the backing of my company to protect you, why would anybody talk?

“If that principal is not upheld, then you are going to see a lot less original reporting on some tough issues.”