Four Little Girls
When documentaries are filmed, produced, and then viewed, the audience is left withmore knowledge and awareness than before having watched it. When I watch a NationalGeographic documentary on exploitation of indigenous peoples, I become aware of theirsituation and further understand the cruel world around me. Also, my emotions are stirred up. With the awareness that documentaries bring, also comes the waves of emotional buildup. This is why documentaries are most effective in grabbing an audience's attention on a subjectmatter having to do with exploitation, injustice, and racism; they show the cruelty and disrespectthe victims are faced with. Four Little Girls, a documentary directed by Spike Lee, is anexample of this. He interviews those that were involved or held knowledge of the bombing at16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. He speaks with officials andprofessionals, preachers, family members and childhood friends of the four girls killed at thisincident. At the same time that these interviews are going on, there are clips from the 50's and60's of black protesters, marches, and beatings relevant to the political and social crisis of the
They also display the girls' badges, awards, certificates,and Bible that one had in her pocketbook the day she was in the church basement attendingSunday school. Police men were even arresting themand placing them in jail cell's. But the forces of the older blackpopulation slowly digressed as white leaders, like "Bull" Connor, Police Commissioner, strodearound through black neighborhoods in his white army tank. Lee incorporatesthe ongoing Civil Rights Movement with the story of the bombing incident and the four girls thatdied as a result. " Bill Cosby adds that these"four lovely children" could've grown up one day to be doctors, lawyers, and Harvardgraduates, but alas, due to ignorance and bigotry, their lives have been taken. It was then that America understood the real hatred there existed in themovement towards integration. Church had become a meeting place for all people involved in the civilrights struggle. When black families began to build substantial homes on a hill, the homes were destroyed by"honkies" that felt that they did not deserve to live too well. And so began the Selma movement which was successful inincluding black citizens as voters. The victims' parents tell the audience through their words, stories, and pictures, ofwho the girls were and how they lived.
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Acceptance Essays
