Robbie Fitzpatrick Red Group

Cinematic Analysis: The Long Walk Home

Part A: The nineteen fifties were a time of great scientific and domestic advancement, as well as a time of great prosperity. But, these same years were a time of extreme suffering for black Americans. The 1990 film The Long Walk Home, examines the toils of African Americans during the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama and the incredible courage it took for them to join together and stand up for their rights. Odessa was the black maid of the Thompsons, a white, well-to-do family living in the suburbs of Montgomery, Alabama. Odessa respected her employers, especially Mrs. Thompson, and adored the children as if they were her own. Each day, she would take the bus to work and have to sit in the back of the bus with the rest of the black people. Odessa, like the rest of the oppressed, was sick and tired of being treated as an inferior race. So, when Martin Luther King Jr. explained his plan to boycott the bus system, she was one of the first in favor of taking part. Each day, Odessa got up at dawn in time to make the walk all the way across town to get to the Thompsons house. When Mrs. Thompson realized how far her maid was walking each morning, she secretly offered Odessa a ride on two days of the week. This went against what Mr. Thompson believed, as well as his younger brother (a white supremacist). When Mr. Thompson finally found out that his wife was giving Odessa rides to work, he was furious. This gave Mrs. Thompson a chance to come to grips with the fact that she did not have racist sentiments, and she felt compelled to drive for the carpool set up by the bus boycott organizers to transport black citizens in lieu of the buses. Mrs. Thompson covertly drove for the bus boycott carpools regularly, until one day, her husband, his younger brother, and a group of angry white supremacists stormed the carpool depot. They attempted to force all of the black carpoolers, and Mrs. Thompson, out

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of the depot. But in a stirring scene, the boycott participants joined hands and began to sing uplifting gospel music, drowning out the roars of the racist whites chanting Walk, nigger, walk. These oppressed Black Americans had every right to do what they did, and even though they were discriminated against and treated as inferior, they still had the courage to stand up and fight for what they believed in.

Part B: The film The Long Walk Home, takes place in 1955, in Alabama. At the time, blacks were forced to sit in the back of the bus, and give up their seat if a white person requested it. This was the year that the Montgomery Bus Boycott was begun by Martin Luther King Jr. While this movie is not a documentary, the specific details of the boycott were never explained. There are references to Martin Luther King Jr., and Ms. Rosa Parks. But, there is no explanation of how the boycott was started. The movie explains the Rosa Parks incident to be independent of the bus boycotts beginning. In actuality, because when Rosa Parks was arrested for not giving up her seat to a white man, she used her one allowed phone call to bring her case to the attention of the president of the NAACP, Rev. E.B. Nixon. He called Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and they decided to have a meeting at the local Baptist church. In the movie, Odessa and her family attended this meeting, without explaining exactly what it was. The next day, no blacks in Montgomery rode the bus system, and thus the boycott began. (Colorado.edu) Because the film was created to illustrate the harshness of the whites in Alabama, there are many biases criticizing the whites of the time. When asked by his wife why he was so cold to Mr. Thompson, Odessas employer, he stated that in order to be respected by any of the other men, he had to be part of the city council, or the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). Although

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the KKK had been officially disbanded in the years after the Second World War, In the 1950s the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement resulted in a revival in Ku Klux Klan organizations. (Spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk) Mr. Thompson felt pressure from the other Southern men and his younger brother to sympathize with the white supremacist cause. The only other white men are characterized as pigs that will do whatever it takes to keep their power over the blacks. Mr. Thompson goes to a city council meeting, and all that is shown is the large podium with KKK flags flying completely in the open. They are not even trying to hide the fact that many of those on the board are members of the Ku Klux Klan. Overall, although the movie was not a documentary, it did not explain the beginnings of the bus boycott. In addition, the biases that are included, characterize the white men of Alabama to be heartless white supremacists.

Part C: Made in 1990, The Long Walk Home is a very deep and meaningful film, illustrating the hardships of being black during the Montgomery Bus Boycott. Metaphors in this movie make the plot more meaningful and interesting. In the beginning of the film, the picture is in black in white, showing that discrimination and segregation are extremely prevalent. The movie shows that the majority of the white population felt there should never be a time that black and white should mix. At the end of movie when Mrs. Thompson and Odessa are at the car depot for the bus boycott, Mr. Thompson, his brother and a band of white supremacists drive up in order to shut down the depot. As the supremacists enter, they beat a black man who is running the depot, and when he does not return punches, the whites yell why dont you hit back, nigger? Knowing that if he does defend himself, he will be put in jail, the man submits to

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the merciless beating. The black women at the depot, as well as Mrs. Thompson and her daughter, stand together as the band of white supremacists corner them screaming Walk nigger, walk! Then, one of the women begins to sing. After a dramatic pause, another joins her, and then a third begins to sing. Soon, all of the women are singing, and the angry men stop yelling. The movie ends with the beautiful voices of the women singing soulful gospel church music. This ending is a metaphor for the trials of the blacks in the South and their triumph over the unfairness of the racism. Their achievement is a huge step forward in the civil rights movement. The use of metaphors throughout the film The Long Walk Home makes the plot more meaningful and interesting, and makes the movie even more worth watching.

Robbie Fitzpatrick Red Group Works Cited Ku Klux Klan. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2013. <http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/USAkkk.htm>. Montgomery Bus Boycott. N.p., n.d. Web. 3 Mar. 2013. <http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/systems/agentsheets/New-Vista/bus-boycott/>.