Arts & Culture

Community Cinema

Community Cinema with WKAR in mid-MichiganMonthly film screenings from September through June at a range of venues in our community, from libraries to arts centers to college campuses. Community Cinema screening events often include panel discussions with leading community-based organizations and special guest speakers, and connect to local resources and programming designed to help people learn more and get more involved.Community Cinema is a national community engagement program of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and Independent Lens, in partnership with PBS and WKAR Public Media from Michigan State University. For more on this national project, visit communitycinema.orgFollow this page for updates on Community Cinema with WKAR in mid-Michigan.

Founders of Birmingham Urban League recall Alabama in 1960s

WKAR Public Media

Published February 12, 2013 at 1:00 PM EST

Alabama in the 1960s was at the heart of the Civil Rights Movement. The bus boycotts, the marches, the sit-ins, the snarling dogs and gushing fire hoses -- many of that era’s iconic moments happened in Alabama.

Under the leadership of Whitney Young, the National Urban League, which is one of our country’s oldest civil rights organizations, joined the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and others in the fight to end Jim Crow segregation in the Deep South.

Our guests today were dispatched by Mr. Young to open an Urban League chapter in Birmingham, Ala. in 1965.

The chapter's former deputy director, Willard Walker, and former director, Clarence Wood, of the recall their work in Alabama in the 1960s and remember Whitney Young.

Mr. Walker will also be featured as a guest speaker on WKAR's panel discussion following a short preview of the upcoming PBS Independent Lens documentary “Powerbroker : Whitney Young’s Fight for Civil Rights” on Feb 13 at 7 p.m.