TV station donates rights-era footage
MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A television station has donated thousands of items, including historic footage from the civil rights era, to the Alabama Department of Archives and History, which will make the material available to the public.
WSFA-TV in Montgomery announced it had given the agency materials dating to the 1950s, including footage from news conferences by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., coverage of the Freedom Riders in 1961 and original film from the “Stand in the School House Door” by then-Gov. George C. Wallace in 1963.
The video also includes scenes from a visit to the NASA center in Huntsville by President John F. Kennedy and Vice President Lyndon Johnson in 1962 and special reports on the death of former University of Alabama football coach Paul “Bear” Bryant in 1983.
When the TV station was planning to switch locations, managers determined it wasn’t practical to move the large numbers of delicate film reels and boxes full of video and other items.
Steve Murray, state archives director, said the department had long suspected the WSFA studios held valuable content for historical preservation, and it jumped at the opportunity to add to its collection when a phone call came in late 2019.
“It was one of those kind of chilling moments … where the hair stands up on the back of your neck when you see these closets after closets of tapes and films,” Murray said. “Just the opportunity to take something off the shelf and see a label … related to the civil rights movement or to other major public events and Alabama’s life and history really made you, made me appreciate the value of what was there.”
The donation includes more than 7,000 audiovisual items in a variety of formats, plus station scrapbooks, photographs, negatives, correspondence with viewers and officials and newsletters.
“We are intimidated by this collection, to be honest with you, because it is huge,” said Meredith McDonough, digital assets director for the state archives, “and because it is unlike anything we have.”