Brummett:

Street have sustained a stronger black middle class?

As the community matured and became more enlightened on race, might Ninth Street have evolved into a place where white people ventured? Might it have come to resemble the movie-preview crowd Friday night, which was unusually mixed racially, certainly by Little Rock standards.

I remember in those Our Town days when, in a small and more intensive follow-up group, a young black woman said the community needed an all-black private school. I was incredulous.

What in the world? Our society had worked through hatred and violence and shame to change the law and fend off the primitive masses to put blacks and whites together in schools, and now this young black woman was extolling an all-black private school. Really?

Yes, really, she said curtly. White people have private schools. Why not blacks?

The important thing— she and other blacks explained to me—is that we make and enforce laws forbidding discrimination against black persons seeking opportunity through public schools and other public institutions as well as in the private workplace. But she said that didn’t

mean black lives could be lifted only by association with paternalistic whites.

I was scolded that the media tended to refer to a school district or a community as declining if it becomes blacker.

My point is that it is a worthy hour-long documentary that can revive those uneasy questions and stir that kind of contemplation and introspection.

The film’s point is that lessons can’t be learned and applied until facts are confronted.

Mayhan said during a panel discussion after the showing that the film provides an opportunity for young people to find out about those who came before—what they accomplished and endured—and thus about themselves. And he said Little Rock was small enough that a meaningful community conversation could be had about where we once were and where we went wrong and where we might now more smartly go.

Watch the film Thursday night or at least set the recorder. Or, better yet, do both.

That’s not an assignment. It’s an opportunity.