The Vernon Johns Story

I saw the movie on TV a few days ago and thought it was excellent. It was good on two levels: acting and education. James Earl Jones did a superb job of displaying emotion, focus passion and vision. My heart was heavy as I watched the brutal and heartless treatment of blacks. I am glad that much of the outward side of racism is diminishing but I don't know if peoples' hearts have changed that much and that is where true change takes place. It was hard to watch but for those of us who have not been around that kind of racism it was a needed reminder to participate towards equality.

The change that took place in the older daughter was at the expense of much pain but her decision to go for the higher cause will always be the price of change.

An outstanding performance by James Earl Jones playing the pastor Vernon johns, and he does not mince his words. Some parts make you laugh, cry, and angry, but ultimately it inspires. His words "If you see a good fight, get in it" really sum up the man who inspired history. The supporting cast are excellent with Nicole leach (who plays his daughter) just trying to fit in to a society which is happy to keep her as a 2nd class citizen. Many at the time felt to scared to rock the boat, apart from Johns who in his own words is a "boat rocker"! Althougth i watched this film for the first time about 15 years ago, it has stayed with me and i wished that more people could see it, even if it may teach a lesson about history and about the fact that behind great men there is often other great men without whom they would have never become..well, Great!

The film tells the story of the Reverend Vernon Johns' struggle for equality in America in the 1960's.

James Earl Jones delivers an all-round stunning dialog playing the reverend of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church, Montgomery, Alabama - a name that most should recognise.

He constantly oversteps his mark when preaching, telling the people who let the white americans run their lives what he -really- thinks of them, cowards, and as he gains more and more attention - eventually demanding to be served in a white-only cafe, but at the end of the film there comes a fantastic little twist.

A very worthwhile watch!

I saw this movie for the first time tonight (1/27/07) and wished I'd seen it 13 years earlier. What a powerful film!!

In the early 1960s, as a college student, I was a white Civil Rights activist in Mississippi, and as such, I viewed with the deepest possible disgust the predecessors of today's equally-bigoted louts. It was the segregationists then, and today, it's the more mild-mannered and somewhat less blatant cultists of the "Religious" Radical Right. The ignorant and deceived people who seek to FORCE tens of millions of women to gestate unwanted pregnancies to term against their will (a very real, 9-month-long form of rape!), and who regard gays to be second-class citizens on the ludicrous basis of something so trivial as the way they choose to have sex in private. The 21st century thus is little better than the mid-20th. The bigots and their targets have changed, but the abject ignorance and hatefulness has not, and continues to poison American society.

Unfortunately, America still has a LOT of growing up do do, and there's still a lot of bigotry to dispose of. Civil Rights Movement II is as important to tens of millions of people as was the first one. Women and gays NEED a leader for today of the stature of leaders like Rev. Vernon Johns.

This is must see for those who are unfamiliar with heroes of the Civil Rights Movement prior to Brown v. the Board of Education and Martin Luther King, Jr. James Earl Jones powerfully portrays a man with all of the courage of Martin Luther King, Jr., but with a more blunt and direct approach. The film masterfully shows how a leader like Dr. King and those who worked with him would have not been as effective had it not been for leaders like Dr. Johns, who were willing to "push the envelope". I teach Social Studies at Southern Nash High School in Bailey, North Carolina and I use this film regularly in class and get the best response to it of any of the films I show. In a film career that has featured numerous brilliant performances by Mr. Jones, I believe that this is his best work. The supporting cast of veteran actors Mary Alice, the late Joe Seneca, and a newcomer at the time, Nicole Leach, is top notch and they play effectively off of Jones.