Film explores blacks' experiences

WARREN — Racism and segregation weren’t codified into law in 1950s and ’60s Warren. But for some black residents, the North’s unwritten rules of racism were worse than the South’s official segregation policies.

“I personally would rather have someone call me a bunch of dirty names and at least acknowledge me as a person than act as if I wasn’t even there,” says Warren resident Cliff Johnson in a new documentary film about the subject.

Johnson and other Warren residents who lived in the city before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 share their experiences in “Invisible Struggles: Stories of Northern Segregation,” which premieres on PBS television station WNEO 45/49 at 9 p.m. Feb. 5.

“Invisible Struggles” will be also be shown at a town hall forum on race relations at 7 p.m. Thursday at Packard Music Hall.

The hour-long film evolved from a Kent State University Trumbull Campus class — Civil Rights in America: 1954-64 — taught by professors Molly Merryman and Ken Bindas in fall 2002.

For their class oral history project, the students interviewed black Warren-area residents who were civil rights activists or who witnessed or experienced segregation.

As the project progressed, Merryman and Bindas realized they had uncovered a long-buried vein of noteworthy regional history. The professors decided to make their findings public.

“The honesty of the subjects in sharing their stories made us realize that we could document this form of cultural segregation,” said Bindas.

In August, the professors took their film to Don Freeman, chief financial officer of PBS 45/49, to see if the station was interested in broadcasting it.

Freeman immediately recognized its uniqueness and value.

“I am always looking for local productions to air, because I feel these programs are valuable to our audience,” he said. “When I review the productions, I must decide whether it will have a connection with our local audience, and I felt that ‘Invisible Struggles’ did.

“We have aired programs that talk about segregation on the national level, but I had not seen a program before that spoke about it on the local level, nor on the regional level,” Freeman continued. “The program is a very good oral history that has relevance not only to Warren people, but also to anybody who lived through the experience.”

“Invisible Struggles” consists of a series of interviews with 12 residents and Staughton Lynd, the nationally renowned civil rights lawyer and activist who lives in Niles. The black residents have vivid memories of insulting incidents, as if they just happened yesterday.

Read more about the project in Monday's Vindicator and on Vindy.com