Preaching, Praying and Strategic Media Planning: From Montgomery to Selma, How the Civil Rights Movement Forced Journalists to Do Their Job

This dissertation will examine the strategic media planning by organizers and participants of the Civil Rights Movement and the impact that their actions had on print and broadcast journalists who covered the movement. Until now, most scholars have focused on the impact that journalism and television had on the movement, rather than the impact the movement had on journalists. This research will show how journalists were forced to focus on a segment of the population they had previously ignored. Most scholars who have delved into this issue conclude that the American Civil Rights Movement owed a great deal to the new medium.1 This researcher will argue that the new medium owed much of its success to the American Civil Rights Movement.;This study will focus on five pivotal events of the Civil Rights Movement: the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott; the 1960 Nashville student sit-ins; the 1961 Freedom Rides; the 1963 Birmingham Campaign and the 1965 Selma march known as “Bloody Sunday”.;1 Fluker, Laurie Hayes, “ The Making of a Medium and a Movement: National Broadcasting Company’s Coverage of the Civil Rights Movements, 1955 – 1965.” Ph.D. Dissertation, The University of Texas, 1996.