Four Small Girls Essay, Research Paper

When docudramas are filmed, produced, and so viewed, the audience is left with

more cognition and consciousness than before holding watched it. When I watch a National

Geographic docudrama on development of autochthonal peoples, I become cognizant of their

state of affairs and farther understand the cruel universe around me. Besides, my emotions are stirred up.

With the consciousness that documentaries bring, besides comes the moving ridges of emotional buildup.

This is why docudramas are most effectual in catching an audience? s attending on a topic

affair holding to make with development, unfairness, and racism ; they show the inhuman treatment and discourtesy

the victims are faced with. Four Small Girls, a docudrama directed by Spike Lee, is an

illustration of this. He interviews those that were involved or held cognition of the bombardment at

16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama in 1963. He speaks with functionaries and

professionals, sermonizers, household members and childhood friends of the four misss killed at this

incident. At the same clip that these interviews are traveling on, there are cartridge holders from the 50? s and

60? s of black dissenters, Marches, and whippings relevant to the political and societal crisis of the

twenty-four hours. Besides included are picture shootings of the misss, including their headstones. Lee incorporates

the on-going Civil Rights Motion with the narrative of the bombardment incident and the four misss that

died as a consequence.

The Civil Rights Movement becomes more existent to us when the supporters are besides

made existent. The victims? parents tell the audience through their words, narratives, and images, of

who the misss were and how they lived. They besides display the misss? badges, awards, certifications,

and Bible that one had in her pocketbook the twenty-four hours she was in the church cellar go toing

Sunday school.

The white functionaries, who were more or less viewed as the adversaries, radius of that

same epoch from their point of position. Through intercutting exposures of lynched black work forces have oning a

mark that read? This Nigger Voted? , white work forces made common yet hypocritical comments of how

Birmingham was a pleasant topographic point to raise a household.

The movie goes through a series of events and efforts by black leaders to construct an

effectual civil rights alliance between local leaders like Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth and

national leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. , and James Bevel. But the forces of the older black

population easy digressed as white leaders, like? Bull? Connor, Police Commissioner, strode

around through black vicinities in his white ground forces armored combat vehicle.

The battle moved on to the younger coevals. Police work forces were even collaring them

and puting them in gaol cell? s. The speedy inclusion of pupils into the motion allowed for a

monolithic sum of immature people to come together and protest full strength. It began foremost with

the high school pupils, so junior high, and eventually grade school pupils. When a younger

kid had been asked by her female parent where she had been that twenty-four hours, the kid proudly said, ? In

jail. ? ? In gaol? What were you doin in gaol? ? , asked her amazed female parent. The kid answered,

? For freedom. ?

Testimonies from the black citizens of Birmingham were intertwined coherently. Hope

every bit good as fright radius from their words as they invested bravery into the public? s immature

people who proudly marched to imprison. Subtle encouragement of the immature was the manner the black

community supported their function in the motion. One instructor had said that when she told her

category about the protests and presentations that were

pulling pupils to the streets, she told

them, ? I hope that when I turn my dorsum to compose on the chalkboard that I don? t bend about and

happen all you gone. ? The whole category was gone when she turned back about. There is a aroma

of pride in her voice when she comments about the empty schoolroom.

Birmingham had history of bombs being used to do political points. The being of

the steel Millss, industry, and metalworkss, made handiness to dynamite rather efficient and easy.

When black households began to construct significant places on a hill, the places were destroyed by

? whiteies? that felt that they did non merit to populate excessively good. ? Dynamite Hill? as the country was

called, prepared for the events at 16th St. Baptist Church in 1963.

The 16th St. Church had become a meeting topographic point for all people involved in the civil

rights battle. It was an immediate mark for the Klu Klux Klan to decelerate the impulse of the

motion. The people who bombed the church chose the cellar as its mark site, where

kids were gathered for Sunday school, as opposed to the chief room which contained all the

grownups in fold. By making this, daze and hatred was given to the culprits when the

crushed organic structures of the four small misss were removed from the debris. A white officer, known to

be a Klansmans, even said that he didn? T believe it would come this far. More impulse was

given to the motion and more people were enamored in deriving rights, particularly voting

rights, to protect their kids. And so began the Selma motion which was successful in

including black citizens as electors. But duty for the bombardment was non given to anyone

and the households had to wait for old ages in sorrow for justness to predominate.

Walter Conkrite states that the Whites didn? t realize until the tragic bombardment how cruel

their purposes were. It was so that America understood the existent hate at that place existed in the

motion towards integrating. He says this was an? awakening. ? Bill Cosby adds that these

? four lovely kids? could? ve grown up one twenty-four hours to be physicians, attorneies, and Harvard

alumnuss, but alas, due to ignorance and bigotry, their lives have been taken. Jesse Jackson

provinces that although this was a tragic incident, it did non travel without its intent. This incident

was turned? from a crucifixion into Resurrection. ?

The movie goes on to include cartridge holders of recent, modern twenty-four hours bombardments of churches, as if a

new craze were back from the yesteryear like bellbottoms. Around 1994, 22 churches had been

blasted. Ever since the Civil War, the KKK began to destruct the spiritual sanctuary of its

enemies. A adult male stated that they ( the KKK ) could maintain on blaring the churches, but that they

would? reconstruct the churches stronger than earlier? , and that they couldn? t bomb every bit fast as they

could reconstruct. This statement targets the fueling energy people had received from sick incidents.

That alternatively of giving up hope, as the KKK idea would go on, they burned with more

strength.

Four small Girls reminds us that in a awful and sad clip in history, ? the choir kept

vocalizing of freedom. ? It was displayed that the black citizens of Birmingham would non give up.

That they would non give in until they gained their rights they felt they truly deserved, and

they won. They had many obstructions along the manner, and these merely made them angrier and more

tied to the motion in footings of carry throughing their ends ; ends which they have truly won

and should? ve had from the beginning.

Bibliography

Documentary: Four Little Girls, Directed by Spike Lee