At 09:25 AM 1/21/2005 -0500, Robert Duffy wrote:
>Brian Cagle, a former UTC theater student currently pursuing an MFA
>in film at Northwestern University, was recently awarded First Place
>in Primary Multimedia from the American Association for State and
>Local History for his film " No Incident, No Service: The Chattanooga
>Sit-Ins of 1960."  The film will be shown on Saturday, 22 January at
>2:00 pm at the Chattanooga Regional History Museum.  Admission is
>free.
Thanks for the announcement, Bob.
         I want to encourage everyone who can to see this film.  When I saw
it last year I gained even more respect and admiration for a couple of our
colleagues, Booker Scruggs and Roland Carter, who participated in these
sit-ins.
         They were high school kids at the time, and remember, this was
February 1960, the very beginning of the modern civil rights
movement.  Eisenhower was president, the Wisconsin and West Virginia were
several months later.  The only real sit-ins that had taken place were
those by the NCA&T students in Greensboro in the fall of '59.  The
Nashville sit-ins by Fisk students, out of which would emerge SNCC, were
the following summer.
         As a pivotal historic event and point of civic pride, this should
be celebrated as much as the local civil war battles, IMHO.  Those high
school kids, including Booker and Roland, became an important link in a
chain of events.  A lot of our students, especially those from Chattanooga,
might gain a greater appreciation of their history by seeing it as well.

Fritz Efaw.