WILLblog

This just in from Kimberlie Kranich, WILL's Outreach Coordinator, and the person who deserves several tons of credit (to say the least) for making the Youth Media Workshop documentary project happen for the past two years:

All, Just a reminder that the radio documentary, "More Than A Bus Ride: Desegregating Champaign Schools," will air at 5 pm Saturday on AM-580 and again at 6 pm on Monday, June 27th. "More Than A Bus Ride" examines the process and implications of the 1968 plan that desegregated public schools in Champaign. Interviews with members of the committee formed to head up desegregation, as well as teachers, principals, parents and students tell the story and beg the question, "Are African-American students better off today than they were before the schools were desegregated?" Fifteen students from Franklin Middle School and Central High School conducted all of the interviews, engineered the interviews, and edited stories from those interviews as part of the Youth Media Workshop, a collaboration between WILL and Innovative Ed Consulting. Dr. Will Patterson, Dave Dickey and I put the final version together. The documentary features Harold Baker, Dereke Clements, Al Davis, Dave Downey, Maudie Flake Edwards, Lila Jean Eichelberger, Rupert Evans, Alvin Griggs, Ruby Hunt, John Lee Johnson, Julian Rappaport, Jackie Smith, Hester Nelson Suggs and Crystal Womble. More information, including transcripts of the raw interviews, desegregation documents from 1968, and more information about the students who produced the program are available at will.uiuc.edu Tune in and send us your feedback. Thank you! Kimberlie Kranich

You can listen to the documentary when it airs on WILL-AM this Saturday at 5 pm, and again on Monday, June 27th at 6 pm. You can also listen to it online in RealAudio and download it in MP3 format from the More than a Bus Ride documentary website. And if you missed the documentary from last year ('Our Journey: Stories of School Desegregation and Community in Champaign-Urbana') you can also listen to the whole thing or the interviews from which it was produced, read transcipts, and a whole lot more on the Our Journey website.