“The Movement,” a documentary about Danville’s 1963 civil rights struggle, will be available to rent or buy on Amazon Prime and Apple TV starting Jan. 23. The documentary has been shown at several community screenings since it was released in June but has been unavailable to watch at home.
At every screening, people have asked how they can get a copy, said producer Jonathan Parker. Now, he can tell them that they can pre-order the documentary on multiple platforms. It will be $12.99 to purchase and $4.99 to rent, he said.
Parker said he’s excited for the documentary to reach a wider audience, both in the community and outside of Danville.
“We saw the story as bigger than just Danville,” Parker said. “We really wanted to tell the folks outside of the community about Danville’s rightful place in the civil rights movement.”
The 80-minute documentary premiered June 11 — 60 years and one day after Bloody Monday.
Bloody Monday is how June 10, 1963, has become known. It was one of the most violent days of the civil rights movement in Danville, when white police and deputized municipal workers turned fire hoses and night sticks on mostly Black demonstrators, injuring at least 47 and arresting 60.
“The Movement” compiles first-person accounts of the summer of 1963, when young protesters fought for equality in the city and were met with violence from the police force and racism from the justice system. Parker interviewed 17 people for the documentary, most of whom were protesters in the movement.
While making the documentary, Parker and his team were touched by these first-person accounts, which remain powerful 60 years later, he said.
“I was so struck by the courage of those that were out every day in the face of resistance, really working to make the world a better place for them and their families,” he said. “It’s a really inspiring and encouraging story that I want other people to become familiar with.”
Parker knows, from personal experience and from working on this project, that “even in our own community, there are people who are just not familiar with the story.”
Parker himself was in his 30s when he first learned about Bloody Monday and the summer of 1963, despite growing up in Pittsylvania County, just miles away from where the struggle happened.
And this is not uncommon, because the movement was not meaningfully acknowledged by the city for decades afterwards, and many of the protesters found it too difficult to talk about afterwards. Institutional historians also passed over the movement, so many current residents of the area are uninformed about it.
“We wanted to be able to capture it while there were still some people that actually participated around to tell it in their own words,” Parker said.
Getting the documentary offered on streaming platforms was a monthslong process, he said. Parker and his wife, Rebecca, began working with Pennsylvania company Virgil Films in September to distribute the film and connect with digital retailers.
“It’s been a long process to get to this point, but I’m excited about the timing,” Parker said. “We’re a few weeks away from Black History Month and we have some educational screenings coming up in Danville.”
There will be a screening of “The Movement” at Chatham Hall at 7 p.m. Jan. 23, the same day it will be available online. The screenings are often accompanied by a question-and-answer session with some of the protesters featured in the film.
The documentary also features local Black historian and genealogist Karice Luck-Brimmer, without whom the project wouldn’t have happened, said Parker.
“I’m just so grateful for the dozens of people that we got a chance to sit down with and hear them share their story in their words,” Parker said. “We don’t take it lightly that they entrusted us to help tell their story. The greatest honor of my professional career has been to help them tell the story.”