Abstract
This extensive study of the representation of the Civil Rights Movement starts in Selma, 17 March 1965, when a sheriff’s posse charged on horseback into a peaceful march, brandishing canes, whips and clubs. Such violence against Blacks had happened countless times before, but this time, there was a difference. The attack was televised. It is a suitable story with which to begin for it highlights the role played by television in showing what was happening in the struggle for Black enfranchisement and desegregation. As Aniko Bodroghkozy puts it, ‘Television brought the nonviolent campaigns of the Jim Crow South to viewers in all parts of the country … Television brought black people, imaginatively at least, into white people’s living rooms’ (p. 3). The book examines the consequences of this and explores how TV helped mould new attitudes in ‘race relations’. In Part 1, Bodroghkozy identifies key themes in network news coverage of the Civil Rights story, including the March on Washington. She then turns in the second section to entertainment, with shows increasingly, if slowly, turning to an exploration of ‘race relations’ themes and presenting viewers with more African American characters. This section includes chapters on the high-profile series East Side/West Side, Julia and Good Times, all of which deal with the shifting relations of ‘Blackness’ and ‘Whiteness’. Bodroghkozy has produced an absorbing account of television and the Civil Rights Movement. It is well researched, well conceived and well written, making it an important contribution to television history.