Worthy new looks at civil rights heroes

Two cable shows tackle subjects we know well and find success by moving beyond the obvious.

By ERIC DEGGANS

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 23, 2001

[Photo: HBO] Jeffrey Wright portrays the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., a man he calls “an American hero in the classic sense . . . a man of the people.”

Imagine you're an actor asked to play a historical figure.

Now imagine that historical figure is one of the nation's most beloved leaders, with a speaking and personal style so singular, most Americans know it by rote before they get out of grade school.

Now imagine you're Jeffrey Wright, and you've agreed to play Martin Luther King Jr. in a TV movie that sheds new light on the incident that kicked off the nation's civil rights movement, the Montgomery, Ala., bus boycott.

"He was an American hero in the classic sense . . . a man of the people. The weight he carried on his shoulders was overwhelming," said Wright. "I was initially reticent to take on the role. (Because) I could appreciate that."

Fortunately, Wright -- who first earned critical acclaim playing street artist Jean-Michel Basquiat in Julian Schnabel's art film Basquiat -- didn't heed his doubts. Because his textured, spot-on portrayal of King helps make HBO's Boycott one of the best TV movies to explore civil rights history in a long time.

With the networks busy concentrating on ratings in an all important February "sweeps" period, it usually falls to cable to create programming that celebrates Black History Month without putting viewers to sleep.

Fortunately, Boycott is among a pair of shows that manages that neat feat, along with a more traditional documentary offered by A&E: Biography Close-Up: Civil Rights Heroes.

Boycott comes at its subject with a revisionist's attitude -- intent on presenting legends such as King, Ralph Abernathy and Rosa Parks as real people, piercing the larger-than-life aura history often provides.

As the boycott begins in December 1955, Abernathy and King are young ministers in their mid-20s, just learning the politics of sleepy Montgomery's black community.

When Parks -- who had been a respected member of the city's NAACP chapter for 10 years -- challenges the rules that forced black bus riders to give their seats to white people and sit in the back, area activists plan a bus boycott on the day of her trial.

They didn't know it then, but Montgomery's black folks would stay off the buses for the next 381 days -- until the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the city's segregationist bus policies were unconstitutional.

"These were heroic people and they were heroic times, and we, unfortunately, live in mediocre times," said director Clark Johnson, who made his showbiz bones playing Detective Meldrick Lewis on NBC's Homicide: Life on the Street. "There is a challenge there. We haven't lived up to the dream."

Johnson employs a variety of techniques to keep viewers engaged, beginning with an inspired cast that includes CCH Pounder, Reg E. Cathey (Oz), Whitman Mayo (Sanford and Son) and even a cameo from Aaron Neville.

The film bounces between the standard TV movie frame, real and manufactured documentary footage (characters even address the camera as if they're talking to the guy who is filming) and a home movie style that captures King's family moments well. Even the music engages, with a contemporary sound that avoids the old hits of the day.

"I grew up in the civil rights movement and have two MTV-inspired teenagers," Johnson said. "I wanted to approach this in a way that would appeal to them visually and emotionally, rather than just being a history lesson."

Still, there are lots of lessons at hand. Viewers see how the city's white rulers used TV and newspapers to spread lies about the boycott movement; how King wound up leading the Montgomery Improvement Association because more established clergy feared for their reputations; how Coretta Scott King urged her husband to be practical in his actions.

At times, the mishmash of styles can be a little confusing -- though it also yields a way-cool shot of King engaged in conversation with modern-day kids on a street corner as cops pass by blaring their sirens (can you say Rodney King?). And ending the film just as King begins to emerge as a national legend only leaves you wishing HBO had made this the first part of a longer story.

[Photo: A&E] Basketball great Bill Russell is interviewed by Harry Smith for Biography Close-up: Civil Rights Heroes, which will air at 8 p.m. Wednesday on A&E.

While acknowledging such tales of oppression and resistance may invoke painful feelings of anger and frustration for some black viewers, Wright reacts differently.

"These are difficult stories . . . but they are (also) the testaments of survival," the actor said. "I always tend to think of escapism as not something that distracts me from the truth, but that gives me a greater insight into it. So I think these are wonderful, escapist movies."

Civil Rights Heroes also offers fresh insight, mostly by interviewing an unusual slate of subjects for its hourlong Biography special.

A&E's Harry Smith interviewed activist actors Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis; former Boston Celtics basketball star Bill Russell; Gloria Carter Dickerson and Beverly Carter, two women from the first black family to desegregate white schools in Mississippi's Sunflower County 35 years ago; and Irene Morgan Kirkaldy, a black woman who refused to give her bus seat to a white man nine years before Rosa Parks' famous incident.

The fresh subjects bring a different spin to the proceedings, as when Davis defines the way black people were forced to behave around whites in the Deep South as "niggerization."

It was, he said, "a process almost as codified as a dance. At times, the oppressor almost begged you to accept the oppression. (As if saying) "It would make us both feel better, if you could just be a nigger another day.' "

Smith also draws evocative stories from Russell, who played the game in the '50s (when the National Basketball Association was 85 percent white), rising to become the NBA's first black head coach. Beverly Carter cries while recalling the white teachers who encouraged students to ostracize her -- decades before she would return to her old elementary school as a teacher herself.

It all adds up to a poignant program that echoes Boycott's vision -- telling stories we should never forget in ways that ensure we never will.

AT A GLANCE: Boycott airs at 8 p.m. Saturday on HBO. Grade: A-. Rating: TV-PG. Biography Close-Up: Civil Rights Heroes airs at 8 p.m. Wednesday on A&E. Grade: B+.

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