The Story

The film begins by looking at critical events of the early 1960s as they set the stage for the civil rights movement in during the rest of the decade.  Protests, riots, and public speeches are featured to show the general mood and tension in the United States.

With an understanding of the national mood, the film moves to mages of Eugene in the 1960s, looking at the community at large, streets, shops, people and other examples of daily living.  From this the audience gets a sense of Eugene’s existence as a town during this period.  A briefly narrated sequence introduces the community as Eugene, OR, the home of the University of Oregon.  This move to Eugene shows both the connection and distance of Eugene to national events.

Civil rights issues are brought to the foreground with a look at segregation as seen through housing issues presented by a former member of CORE, the Congress of Racial Equality.  This community wide problem leads directly to issues on the University of Oregon campus where African-American students were banding together to form the Black Student Union, or BSU.  This group proved to be pivotal in UO history, as they demanded changes in the University policies to reflect their cultural heritage and their presence on campus.  As the number of African-American individuals was small at the time, when a young man came to town and forged a Eugene chapter of the Black Panther Party, it was generally the same group of students that flocked to his new group.

Those students who founded the local BPP chapter went on to incorporate programs, founded by other Black Panther chapters, in their own local work, including but not limited to work with the First Congregational Church to present a free breakfast program to those, of any race, that were in need.  Though the group was a part of projects like this, their gathering, their “rhetoric of violence” disturbed and raised fear in many white members of the community.  An argument still exists as to whether or not the Panthers were physically capable of the threat that so many white people felt so distinctly.  Whether or not they were, they were an influential presence in the community as is seen in the memories of those that lived here during the time.

With narration to sum things up, the audience is brought to a point of realization that, even in this “liberal Berkeley North,” problems of racism and segregation existed.  Even in a community like Eugene, individuals were forced to deal with the same dramatic tension that happened so stereotypically in other areas of the country.