Differences

This shows you the differences between two versions of the page.

--- 329:question:329--week_12_questions_comments-2026 [2026/11/12 03:40] – [The "So What" Question -- Why should we care about the movie and its version of history?] 76.78.172.22
+++ 329:question:329--week_12_questions_comments-2026 [2026/11/12 14:24] (current) – [The "So What" Question -- Why should we care about the movie and its version of history?] 199.111.65.11
@@ Line 20: / Line 20: @@
 The Long Walk Home (1990) functions effectively as a secondary source by shifting the historical narrative of the Montgomery Bus Boycott away from traditional figureheads and toward everyday participants. Film as a medium allows viewers to intimately understand the personal toll of large-scale collective action. What the movie gets right about history is that working-class Black women, specifically domestic workers like Odessa, were the true engine and sacrifice-bearers of the movement. Because their employers lived in distant white neighborhoods, these women endured grueling daily walks that drained their energy and cut into their family lives. While prominent male leaders shaped strategy and faced targeted public harassment, the boycott could not have succeeded without ordinary citizens whose sustained economic and physical sacrifices gave the movement its power. - Tyler J.
-======Problems with historical accuracy? Errors in fact?======
+The Long Walk Home gives a general overview of what was happening during the mid 1950s during the Civils Right Movement. It handles segregation and the idea that there was both nonviolent and violent aspects of protesting. The movie also displays the violent racism white people had towards black people. The two major examples of this are in the beginning of the movie when Odessa gets screamed at by the police officer and the second being when the three high school to college boys chase Selma down and beat up her brother. --Shelby Hawley
+I think The Long Walk Home can work as a secondary source about the Montgomery Bus Boycott. I like how throughout the movie, the audience learns about the events and developments of the boycott through the lives and conversations between the two families. The movie didn't shy away from how white residents of Montgomery were incredibly racist and violent towards black residents and their paranoia around the boycott. Mr. Thompson has this gradual progression into joining a white supremascist organization and being more violent towards his wife in the process. The Christmas dinner scene also, I think, does a good job of depicting some of the real things white people would say and were afraid of in the South in the mid-50s. -- Grayson D.
+I think The Long Walk Home works very well as a secondary source of the past. It shows the progression of the Montgomery bus riots from the perspectives of ordinary citizens and their families rather than the main individual spokespeople of the movement. After reading through the sources given, I noticed that a lot of the reactions of the characters in this movie were quite accurate to how they were in real life at the time. White married women with black maids in Montgomery indeed sometimes drove their maids to work despite the criticism of their husbands, and there was constant lying about whether or not the maids were supporting the boycott. This movie also didn't stray much away from showing the hatred and animosity many white people in Montgomery felt towards black people, especially during this contentious time. - Leo T.
+======Problems with historical accuracy? Errors in fact?======
+Although The Long Walk Home accurately portrays many of the racial tensions and hardships surrounding the Montgomery Bus Boycott, I believe its greatest historical weakness is the emphasis placed on the fictional relationship between Odessa and Miriam. The boycott was a massive, organized movement supported by African American churches, community organizations, and thousands of ordinary citizens. By concentrating on Miriam’s growing awareness of racial injustice, the film risks diminishing the contributions of the African American women who were instrumental in organizing and sustaining the movement.
+I also question the historical accuracy of Miriam’s participation in the carpool system and the confrontation with the white mob near the end of the film. Even Rosa Parks questioned the realism of these scenes. While the film successfully illustrates the personal sacrifices associated with segregation and resistance, it simplifies a much larger struggle into a story of individual moral transformation. I think the film is historically valuable, but it provides a better understanding of the social atmosphere of the boycott than of the actual organization and accomplishments of the Civil Rights Movement. - Todd H.
 ======How does the film’s overall interpretation(s) deviate from scholarly historical sources (as presented in class)?======
+The long walk home films deviation touches on our discussion in class but only briefly. We obviously see many southern white men wanting to stick to the ruling of separate but equal. We see the separation is obviously not equal when the town of Montgomery is presented. Many black Americans can't afford to have the luxury of cars like white people because they weren't given a proper enough education for a higher paying job. The lecture taught us about how the Plessy vs. Ferguson case from 1896 was the determinant for the concept of separate but equal. Montgomery is like a lot of other southern towns due to their separated facilities over half a decade after the case ruling. In class, more court cases were brought up that happened around the time of the film's portrayal. Unfortunately, Perez vs. Sharpe nor Brown vs. Board of Education were talked about in this film. The objective of the film was of course the Montgomery bus boycott but I think that mentioning these court cases could have contributed to the crumbling of the separate but equal concept in the film. The date of the official end of the Montgomery bus boycott was talked about in class as well as mentioned in the film. -- Autumn Morris
+The Long Walk Home (1990) differs from scholarly historical interpretations by focusing primarily on the personal relationship between Odessa Cotter and Miriam Thompson rather than the larger, organized Civil Rights Movement. As discussed in class, the Montgomery Bus Boycott was not simply a spontaneous reaction to Rosa Parks’ arrest. It was a carefully organized effort supported by African American churches, community leaders, and organizations such as the Women’s Political Council and the Montgomery Improvement Association.
+The film also places considerable emphasis on Miriam’s changing attitudes toward segregation. While this demonstrates how individuals could challenge the racial expectations of their communities, it shifts some attention away from the African American women who played essential roles in the movement. Our class discussions emphasized that Black women provided much of the organizational strength behind the Civil Rights Movement, even though men frequently occupied the most visible leadership positions.
+I believe the film succeeds in illustrating the personal hardships and racial tensions of the period, but it simplifies the broader political, religious, and legal struggles that made the boycott successful. Rather than presenting the movement as a collective achievement, the film concentrates on individual courage and moral transformation. This makes the story emotionally engaging, but it does not fully represent the complexity of the historical events. - Todd H
 ======How does this movie work as a primary source about the time in which it was made?======
 This movie was released in 1990, a time of increased cognizance of multiculturalism in the United States. Two years later would come the Rodney King riots — protests that occurred after a video of a brutal beating of a Black man at the hands of Los Angeles police came to light. This movie, however, leans into that idea of hopeful multiculturalism — the singing stops the white men from approaching, Odessa gets a gift for Mary Katherine, Odessa’s children aren’t killed when they are attacked by white teenagers, etc. The 1990s are an interesting crossroads in race relations in the United States; the Civil Rights movement was about 25 years earlier and there were more Black Americans being elected to political office, however a "war on crime" was still occurring that targeted Black Americans and significant wealth inequalities still existed. It is interesting to see this time in America when many are trying to reckon with the past but still trying to emphasize this idea that not all white people are bad. I have been struggling to come to a conclusion on if this movie still plays into that white savior trope. While Miriam’s decision to drive Odessa and support the boycott is ultimately the climax of the movie, she must struggle with what it will cost her and she does go back in forth between what her husband wants and what the community around her believes with what she believes is right. What to me still has elements of the idea of the good white people saving the day is how Mary Katherine narrates part of the movie (a white kid narrating the experiences of a Black woman, instead of hearing it from Odessa herself), we are given Miriam’s backstory (being raised by a Black maid, seeing the Black kids swimming alongside white kids in Oregon, etc.) as a reason to why she is not racist, and how Miriam swings fully to support the boycotts by allowing Odessa to sit up front in the car and starts carpooling anyone who needs a ride by the end. Similarly, Odessa's character really isn't animated, maybe that is done on purpose to show the restraint that Black Americans had to have in a Jim Crow society and to ultimately be successful with civil disobedience. However, by making her character almost silent at times, it allows Miriam's character to take the spotlight with her speeches and powerful lines. – Nora M.
+With this movie being made in the 1990s, there was only 30–40-year gap between the Civil Rights Movement, while that seems like a lot on paper it isn't as big as it seems. By the time this movie is release there are multiculturism within the United States, however; there is still racial violence present throughout the time of this movie. -Shelby Hawley.
 ======The "So What" Question -- Why should we care about the movie and its version of history?======
@@ Line 46: / Line 60: @@
 As said I think this film has a lot to say about racial and gender dynamics at the time. There is it course the depiction of racism. I do not think the film shys away from the language used orviolence used towards black people throughout the film. And while it is uncomfortable to witness, it is the truth and I think it’s important the film discusses it. As previously mentioned the film also depicts intersectionality with being a woman and being black. Miriam grapples with the patriarchy, trapped between doing what is right and the thumb of her husband. Still Miriam benefits from being white and wealthy and I think the film depicts that well. We also see the danger black women face in the scene where Selma is surrounded by white men, harassed, and almost sexually assaulted if her brother had not intervened. There is an inherent danger being both black and a woman and I think the intersectionality is depicted well, especially for the 90’s. Furthermore, I think the film also has commentary on class between the two families. The Thompsons are rich and well off, they can hire a maid and live in a nice house. Meanwhile the Cotters live by small means, Odessa cannot drive herself during the bus boycott and therefore must walk in shoes that do not fit. I think the scene most evident of the class divide is the Christmas Morning scene. The Thompsons have an absurdly large pile of presents, to the point it is almost comical. While the Cotters have a much more modest Christmas, where Odessa receives new shoes and a coat, bewildered how her family could afford it.
 -Ellie Irwin
+I care about this movie because it almost brought me to tears. Seeing how hard many black women, especially Odessa, worked to provide for their families as well as helping a cause was very motivating. Many movies have the effect of matching historical events to their scenes but a Long Walk Home really stood out to me. It may have been the welcoming homes shown, but I believe that this film felt a lot like reality and how real people would have felt back in this time period. This version of history was very harsh but it was empowering. Black women feeling powerless in their own situations. The white mother or Mrs. Tompson was really a unique figure in this timeframe because she chose to go against her husband, family, and basically everybody she knew just to help her maid in a good cause. This movie brought together two unlikely women to help solve a problem they were living through while still emitting motherly love.-- Autumn Morris
+I feel that this film is important and should be cared about because it brings a visual element to the Montgomery Bus Boycott that many people have never had. Like Nora said, I had also learned about Rosa Parks and the boycott quite a lot in k-12 education, but I had never seen a film interpretation of it. The reason I think that may be is because the bus boycott is not as "flashy" a part of history as other parts of history such as the American Revolution or Civil War. There weren't big shootouts or anything like that, so interpreting this time of history seems to have fallen by the wayside. However, I think it's still a crucial part of history and one that deserves to be shown, so it's good that *The Long Walk Home* interprets it into a film visual element as it does. -Ezra C.
+This film has some uniquely important aspects to it that other big budget films which may focus on racial injustice and the civil rights movements in America tend to ignore. For one thing, the central characters in this movie are women. Ordinary women that, for the most part, are just trying to go about their daily lives during the Montgomery bus boycott. A lot of films that focus on history tend to focus on the main figures in our history books which, more often than not, are usually men. Ordinary people tend to be forgotten or shoved to the side in favor of what may be seen by audiences as the more exciting lives and actions of those individuals who spearheaded change in our country. While those films are also important, it is nice to see a change in which the focus is switched to everyday people instead. - Leo T.
+One aspect of this film that I think makes it worth studying is the fact that the two main characters are women. So far, many of the movies we watched center men, and typically white men, and that's because I think oftentimes the audience that is assumed to be consuming more historical films are men or at least in the past history is kind of a man's interest rather than a woman's. Having two female characters as the leads of this film allows for a different perspective on the Montgomery bus boycott and the culture in Alabama in the mid-50s. This movie, like I said in my previous comment, doesn't shy away from showing the racist things white people said and the violent things they did during this time, which I think is important for audiences to see to better understand this particular time and place but also why the bus boycott is such a significant piece of the Civil Rights movement and of history in general. The movie also doesn't shy away from misogyny and violence towards women, particularly in the final moments of the film where the men break Miriam's car and slap her. Additionally, Odessa's daughter gets harassed by a group of white boys when she attempts to ride the bus. I think we should car about this movies version of history because it tells the story of the Montgomery bus boycott through the lives of "real" people and gives a glimpse into what life was like for people of different ages, races, classes, and genders in this particular time and place. -- Grayson D.
+The Long Walk Home’s significance lies in its depiction of the Montgomery bus boycotts and, more importantly, its representation of the systemic racism that Black Americans routinely faced whilst illustrating the complicity of white individuals operating within this status quo and the excessive violence that came with it. Arguably, what makes this film stand out in comparison to other films depicting the latter half of the Jim Crow era is that the film routinely subverts the expectation of white saviorism, continuously allowing Black women to assert their agency (and, in turn, challenging traditional gender dynamics of the time period), as such, offering a poignant commentary on intersectionality that redefines audiences' understandings of the Civil Rights movement in its entirety, only more so by taking a much more individualized and arguably nuanced approach that challenges any preconceived notions. – Bailee E.
+This movie provides a very important visual representation of the ridiculousness of the “separate but equal” doctrine. For an era of viewers that for the most part have not seen what this looks like, it is very startling but a necessary reality to understand history. One example that strikes me from the movie is when the women are getting on the bus early in the movie. It shows them entering through the front door of the bus to pay the fare, then exiting and going in through the back door to find their seats. This is an obvious example of how the Black riders of the Montgomery bus system faced a different set of circumstances than the white riders making their life more difficult and certainly not equal. The movie bringing this representation to a new generation is very important and gives needed context to what kinds of rights the boycotters were fighting for. – Kendall Breslin