Lay my burden down

Duration: 0:27:36

Genre: Documentary | Educational | Social problem

Year Published: 1966

Creator: Indiana University Audio-Visual Center: Distributor | National Educational Television: Distributor

Format: 16mm

Color: B&W

Sound: sound

Description: This program revisits the state of Alabama one year after the 1965 Selma-to-Montgomery march and the ensuing Voting Rights Act of 1965 to document the economic and educational plight of black tenant farmers in the southern United States. In spite of hard work in the fields, the tenant farmer, who earns on the average less than $1,000 a year, can provide his family with only the most meager existence. Constantly in debt to the white land-owner, his children cannot escape because the schools for them are hopelessly inadequate. The black tenant farmer's only hope is the recently obtained right to vote. The attitude of white neighbors is expressed in the view that farmers have "no complaints...They're all happy." Attempting to visit a black school, the crew is denied entry by a white sheriff. In Lowndes County, where African-Americans have been refused membership in the Democratic Party, Stokely Carmichael (head of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) is organizing a third party, the Black Panthers, devoted to Black Power. The film ends with a challenge to the Federal government: more jobs must be created, poverty funds better allocated, and the agriculture department policed more adequately., Surveys the accomplishments of the Civil Rights movement, the year after the Selma to Montgomery march and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Complete Record: , Documents the economic and educational plight of the Negro tenant farmers in the southern United States. Shows that in spite of hard work in the fields, the tenant farmer, who earns on the average less than $1,000 a year, can provide his family with only the most meager existence. Demonstrates that he is constantly in debt to the white land-owner, his children cannot escape because the schools for them are hopelessly inadequate, and that the Negro tenant farmer's only hope is the recently obtained right to vote., NOTE: Two (or more) records have been merged together to create this data.