An Encompassing ‘Circle’

“There’s so much that younger people need to be aware of,” says Constance Slaughter Harvey, a former civil rights student activist in Jackson, Miss., and now a lawyer, “and there’s so much that older people need to be reminded of. ‘Cause we have not overcome.”

“Being a native of Arkansas and a Southerner, I like Negro people,” asserts Amis Guthridge, a lawyer who was a segregationist leader in Little Rock, Ark. “Always have and always will. But . . . we are different.”

These are but two of the voices that public-radio listeners across the nation will hear in a new 26-part, 13-hour documentary, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken?” Encompassing three decades--1940-1970--the series begins airing here on KPCC-FM (89.3) Sunday 9-10 p.m. (The series also is airing on KPFK-FM [90.7], Wednesdays at 2 p.m., although the first hour already has run there.)

While the Public Radio International series, produced by award-winning documentarian George King for the Southern Regional Council, might appear to be in commemoration of the 29th anniversary Friday of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., George King (no relation) says it most definitely is not.

“I think most people [imagine] Martin Luther King sitting there with a megaphone directing the movement,” he notes, “but that’s absolutely not true. And he would be the first to tell you.”

Instead of concentrating on the movement’s leadership, “Circle” emphasizes the foot soldiers of resistance--and occasionally their opponents--in five Southern capitals: Montgomery, Little Rock, Atlanta, Jackson and Columbia, S.C.

Each city, explains King, represents a different aspect of the struggle. While Atlanta represented change through “quiet, negotiated settlements,” in Jackson, where the courts were “totally racist,” there was “violent resistance.”

“One of the things we were trying to do,” King notes, “is represent the movement as a local phenomenon. Part of the lesson we would like people to understand is that these were ordinary folk who stood up at a time, and often at great personal loss, without even the knowledge in some cases that there was a movement.”

More than 250 voices are in “Circle”--its name derived from a song common to both races as well as to the movement itself. They are scores of fresh interviews as well as voices culled from radio archives, academic archives, even some outtakes from PBS’ “Eyes on the Prize.”

One of the outtakes is Rosa Parks telling her story in fuller detail of what happened when she sat on the bus. Another is Myrlie Evers talking about her husband Medgar’s assassination.

On “Circle,” you not only hear Parks but also her attorney--not only Martin Luther King but also his driver. Constance Harvey was interviewed by King three years ago; Guthridge’s voice was heard on early 1960s tape acquired from the archives of Columbia University.

Julian Bond, a lifelong activist who began leading sit-in demonstrations in Atlanta in 1960, wrote the series’ prologue and epilogue.

As for using the medium of radio, King explains that “there is a tremendous oral tradition in the South, information being passed from generation to generation through stories. So we connect this with the aural tradition of radio. Close your eyes, think back, hear voices, music from another time, grip the arms of your chair. . . .”

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On the home front, KCRW-FM (89.9) launches the series “The United States of Los Angeles,” on Friday at 1 p.m., exploring Southern California’s diversity both ethnically and geographically.

“The U.S. of L.A.” will preempt Warren Olney’s “Which Way, L.A.?” once a month. The debut hour, timed for the month of the fifth anniversary of the Los Angeles riots, profiles the Korean community.

Other programs include “Edge Cities,” places geographically and culturally distant from Los Angeles; an episode on Venice, the beach city as a microcosm of diversity; installments on the not-so-homogeneous African American and Latino communities; the gays, elderly and Russian immigrants of West Hollywood, and communities of Armenians, Iranians, Arabs and Israelis.

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A 90-minute drama series, presented by California Artists Radio Theatre, begins airing on KPFK this weekend (Sundays at 10 p.m.). Shelley Long and William Windom are featured in Oliver Hailey’s comedy “Where She Stops Nobody Knows.” The series is directed and produced by Peggy Webber, who began the series 10 years ago on National Public Radio.