Comcast NBCUniversal celebrates ten years of their award-winning Voices of the Civil Rights Movement platform by releasing ten never-before-seen video interviews on Black Experience on Xfinity (BEX), further expanding the collection of over 200 firsthand interviews featuring American civil rights champions such as award-winning Broadway actress, singer, and lifelong civil rights activist Melba Moore, baseball legend Hank Aaron, and freedom rider Hank Thomas, among others. The Voices of the Civil Rights Movement platform connects audiences to compelling programming that informs and inspires and includes nearly 20 hours of gripping firsthand account videos, historical moments, and stories submitted by the public. To further celebrate the milestone, NBC TODAY’s Craig Melvin and Sheinelle Jones hosted a fireside chat with civil rights pioneering leader, Former UN Ambassador Andrew J. Young, live performances, and tributes to civil rights heroes.
Established in 2013, The Voices of the Civil Rights Movement platform was created to honor the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivered his iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. The Voices platform highlights civil rights figures known locally and nationally. Some of those voices include Henrietta Antonin, Judson Robinson, and Darnell Williams. As a celebrated civil rights foot soldier and activist. Henrietta Antonin began working for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company in 1962. Founded by a formerly enslaved man, Alonzo Herndon, Atlanta Life started supporting the Civil Rights Movement in the 1950s. Antonin would rise to become an executive at Atlanta Life. Judson W. Robinson III represents the third generation of his family dedicated to improving Houston’s Black community. His grandfather, a businessman, community leader, and activist known as “Big Jud,” was a catalyst for change in the city. His father, Judson Jr., continued in Big Jud’s footsteps, becoming the first Black American elected to the Houston City Council. Judson III has carried on the family legacy, first as a councilman and later as President of the Houston Area Urban League. Darnell William, the President and CEO of the Urban League of Eastern Massachusetts, was a young boy in Gary, Indiana, in 1963. He shares the impact of the March on Washington on himself and his generation, “I benefited as a child because I grew up understanding what was at stake, where I stood … I am a product of the March on Washington of August 28, 1963.”
Ebonne Leaphart, Vice President of Local Media Development at Comcast NBCUniversal sat for an interview to discuss the tenth anniversary of The Voices of the Civil Rights Movement platform and its impact on preserving Black voices.
This interview has been edited for clarity and Brevity.
Stephanie Tharpe: Aside from the Voices programming, what other initiatives do Comcast and NBC Universal have to amplify the stories of Civil Rights participants?
Ebonne Leaphart: The Black experience on the XFINITY channel is just one of many destinations under the Comcast NBC Universal banner focused on curating diverse storytelling and reaching audiences of every background and every interest. We also look at our NBC Academy, which is squarely around amplifying and preparing the next generation of diverse journalists, students at HBCUs, and universities that are Hispanic serving. We provide them with resources, mentorship, training, and scholarships to help them capture those stories and have an interest and readiness to be that next generation of journalism leaders both in front of and behind the camera. Voice is one of many initiatives the company is doing across Comcast and NBC Universal to amplify diverse stories.
Stephanie Tharpe: How can we, as viewers, do our part in preserving and amplifying the voices of men and women who participated in the Civil Rights Movement?
Ebonne Leaphart: I remember hearing directly from my grandmothers’.One was among the only Black kitchen workers at American Airlines in Chicago; the other was a beautician at Madam CJ Walker Beauty School. Neither was college educated, and they would say to me that they were excited for all of the opportunities that my generation would have that they didn’t have. Every person we’ve interviewed sentiments are consistent with my grandmothers’. And we have 20 hours of incredible content from over 200 people who have entrusted us with their stories.
The impetus of the collection, back in 2013, captured interviews with 50 participants during the March on Washington. Some of those individuals were Dr. King’s closest confidants and Ambassadors. They’ve all shared that Dr. King was not unanimously popular in the fifties and sixties. Everyone, including the Black community, as a hero, did not herald him. Robert Sparks talks about this in his segment on the Voiceless Collection. When he went to Chicago, he focused on the Poor People’s Campaign. Some ministers and aldermen went to the airport and told Dr. King that he was not welcome are not welcomed there.
So we’re privileged now to have one of the largest multimedia collections of Civil Rights accounts anywhere. We have permanent exhibits in Chicago at the Disable Museum and one at the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. We are receiving requests and have for ten years from all over the country, California and Minnesota, Texas, Florida, and Georgia, for our traveling exhibits. Because there is an appetite, there is an appetite from all over the country for people to share in the experiences of those who lived through the movement of the fifties and sixties.
Stephanie Tharpe: Why must we archive and preserve these first account stories?
Ebonne Leaphart: We have such a privilege as a company, with our reach, our platforms, and our technology, to be able to celebrate the lives of both living heroes and those who have passed on. These are some of the only interviews they’ve ever given because it had taken time for them to gain the courage to share openly and vocalize experiences that, for many, happened when they were children. They are the kids in those iconic images of young people dressed in their Sunday best with water hoses pummelling upon them and dogs at their feet. On the same day Ruby Bridges integrated her school, three other little girls, lesser-known Leona Tate and Tessie Provos, and Gail Etienne desegregated their New Orleans classroom.
Being able to widen the aperture of voices around the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and those events preceding and succeeding has been a noteworthy venture for us as a company. It is so important that we provide this content for free. If you go to civilrightsvoices.com, you can engage in twenty hours of content and fifty moments in civil rights history narrated by the late Dr. Jeremy Bailey.
Stephanie Tharpe: After ten years, what would you want the impacts of this programming to be on the viewers?
Ebonne Leaphart: First, in celebration of 10 years, we have launched ten new segments, and I would encourage everybody to go and experience those. We have well-known names, some of which may be new to our viewers and are not as well known, like Hank Thomas, one of the original Freedom Riders. He was also a student at Howard University. We also interviewed Dr. Gwendolyn Middlebrooks, a professor at Spelman College who is just an incredible human being. One lesser-known fact about Dr. Middleboxes is that she was the family babysitter for Dr. King and Coretta Scott King’s children. She tells a fascinating story about what it was like to be entrusted with their three children when Dr. King and Mrs. King traveled across the United States. Those are a few examples of some of the new tenor interviews we just launched in honor of the 10th anniversary and the latest content you can watch totally free on civilrightsvoices.com. We hope that the Voices platform inspires conversation and dialogue so that kids will talk to their grandparents, and that connection will ensue from those conversations.
Stephanie Tharpe: What is the legacy that you would like to leave behind not only with Comcast NBC Universal and XFINITY but with this project?
Ebonne Leaphart: Paramount to what we do is getting it right and getting it accurate. We had our ten-year celebration in Philadelphia and welcomed Ambassador Andrew Young, who did a fireside chat on September 21. The room was full of individuals who knew each other. It was amazing to watch them reunite together. I watched Ambassador Young kiss the hands of Melba Moore and say it’s wonderful to see you, darling. Knowing what they experienced together, they were in a common fight, and there was this bond of love and a legacy. That was amazing to witness.
When they are pleased and say well done, that is the highest accolade we could have. The Civil Rights Movement initiatives that we do around the country are the only time I am nervous. I sit up a bit straighter every time because it is personal. It’s personal as a Black woman executive in a Fortune 50 company who would not be in this seat talking to you, a Black woman contributor for Forbes.com, if it were not for them. I am aware of that every day. I don’t take that for granted. It influences how I show up. It influences the deserved pressure I put on myself to perform and achieve. To hold my very diverse team to a very high standard, it’s a matter of delivering for and carrying on this legacy of achievement and their expectancy of excellence because they did pave the way to make things a little bit lighter for us just a little bit, and so we’ve got it we’ve got to do the same for the generation that’s coming up behind us.
It’s a long-winded answer that I want to get it right. I want to deliver for them. In my work, I want to stand gently on their shoulders and create space for others to stand on mine. Because a whole host of work went into paving the way for us to be here, you can’t take that lightly.
Content is free on Xfinity platforms, at select museums, and to the general public at CivRightsVoices.com.
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