FEBRUARY ONE

...The world can change in a day

Despite hard-fought gains in the fight for racial equality, segregation remained firmly entrenched in 1960 America. Black citizens in the South were still treated as second-class citizens and their calls for justice remained largely unheard by the nation. There had been some advances in the arena of civil rights with the Brown v. the Board of Education U.S. Supreme Court decision (1954), the Montgomery bus boycott (1955-1956) and the federally enforced desegregation of Little Rock (Ark.) High school (1957), but after that, strong defiance by ardent segregationists pushed the Movement into retreat.

February 1, 1960 changed all that.

Based largely on first hand accounts and rare archival footage, the new documentary film February One documents one volatile winter in Greensboro that not only challenged public accommodation customs and laws in North Carolina, but served as a blueprint for the wave of non-violent civil rights protests that swept across the South and the nation throughout the 1960's.