North Carolina State Film Board

In 1962 Dad was hired by the progressive Democrat, Governor Terry Sandford, to set up a Film Board for the State of North Carolina, based on a reference from John Grierson.

We piled our belongings in a VW bus and moved to a new home in Chapel Hill. The VW van was a family fixture many years. I remember the van as the place where we were all together as a family unit. After staying for one year in the woods of Chapel Hill, we moved to the suburbs of Raleigh. The new Film Board was now built and had a functioning production unit. Mom worked with Dad setting up the editing department and the general operations.

In 1963, Governor Sanford integrated all the schools, buses, parks and public places of North Carolina. Our family took great delight in going to what had recently been a separate African-American park outside of Raleigh on weekends called Reedy Creek State Park. After integration, the African-Americans exercised their newfound rights to attend the previously white-only parks. At first the whites would not attend Reedy Creek State Park, so we had it all to ourselves.

By 1964 the integration movement was causing serious unrest. Dad proposed a program to Governor Sanford to help ease racial tensions by giving African-American students a forum in which to express their ideas, instead of demonstrating on the streets. Sanford approved the four part documentary series, called "the Minority Report". African-American students from four colleges were mobilized under the direction of Jesse Jackson and held discussions and interviews to present their issues and concerns to the state of North Carolina. It was broadcast state wide and distributed widely through church groups and community centers. According to an interview with Ben Mast, a North Carolina native and Dad's Assistant Director at the Film Board, the series was successful in getting the demonstrations off the streets and "averting a crisis". North Carolina underwent a more peaceful transition to integration than other Southern States.

Then in January 1965 the recently elected Republican Governor Dan K. Moore assumed control of North Carolina. His first order of business was to eliminate the left leaning Film Board. Somehow the entire budget application for the Film Board was mysteriously 'misplaced' on the day it was to be approved, thereby eliminating all possibility of funding. At that time, Dad was away in Tehran, giving a UNESCO seminar on Documentary Film Production in Asian Countries. By the time he returned, the damage had been done. Dad tried to salvage the board, but the opposition was just too strong.

This won us kids no popularity among our friends. A gang of neighbourhood boys rounded me up one day and dragged me to the woods where they tied me up to a tree, taped my hands and mouth and beat me up, calling me a Commie. Then they left me there. A while later, a mother of one of the boys came out and released me, instructing me not to tell anyone about the incident. I kept it to myself. We moved away pretty quickly, branded as Communists. The idealist had to retreat.