The Experiment: Black and White at V.E.S.

The movie uses the late-1960s racial integration of a prestigious private school, Virginia Episcopal School, to examine how one example of trailblazing African-American academic excellence both reflected the convergence of education and activism in the Civil Rights era and now challenges the resurgence of American racism and the re-segregation of U.S. schools. The story is told from the point-of-view of filmmaker and author Godfrey Cheshire, who was a white teenager entering V.E.S. in 1967 when Bill Alexander and Marvin Barnard became the first black students admitted to the school. Using archival footage and interviews with Alexander, Barnard and other V.E.S. students and faculty, Cheshire recalls the Southern racial attitudes of the time but also how the two black students rapidly gained the reputation of academic superstars. He then jumps back a year to chronicle the behind-the-scenes battle fought by headmaster Austin Montgomery to integrate the school, a struggle that involved a pioneering Southern philanthropist and the Episcopal Church. Despite the eventual success of the integration effort, 50 years later Charlottesville, Va., was the scene of a lethal white supremacist rally that called into question the advances of previous decades. While Cheshire follows the building of an African-American community and an emerging black political consciousness at V.E.S. after Alexander and Barnard's first year, he also looks at the ways that regressive racial attitudes today are presenting new obstacles for young blacks.