Boycott

A Peabody Award goes to Boycott, written by Herman Daniel Farrell, III, and Timothy J. Sexton and directed for Home Box Office by Clark Johnson. Norman Twain and Shelby Stone served as executive producers, with Producer Preston Holmes and Co-Producer James Bigwood. Boycott returns to events that should by now be among the most famous and familiar accounts of the African-American Civil Rights Movement in the United States. Once again a weary Rosa Parks, movingly portrayed by Iris Little-Thomas, refuses to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Once again she is arrested. Once again a youthful Martin Luther King, Jr., remarkably played here by Jeffrey Wright, begins to rally citizens to walk the hard miles to their jobs as janitors and maids, waitresses and laborers. Once again, a movement takes shape. But in this retelling we go behind and beyond the public record. In Boycott we explore the personal emotions, the domestic struggles, and the unknown conflicts that precede and under gird courage. We explore the consequences of moral choices. And we are reminded that these and similar choices must still be confronted one by one, by individuals and by society, if we are all to live free at last. For refusing to allow history to slip into “the past,” Boycott receives a Peabody Award.