The student protests and gunfire that erupted on the campus of North Carolina A&T State University nearly 40 years ago has long been an understated part of North Carolina’s Civil Rights movement. But Aggie alumnus, Michael Anthony, is on a quest to change that with his 2008 independently produced documentary, “Walls That Bleed.”

The film, which Anthony also directed, was screened at the School of Social Work on Feb. 3 as part of campus-wide events celebrating and honoring diversity. The film was shown to more than 150 people, including UNC students, faculty, staff, and invited guests just a few months shy of the event’s 40th anniversary.

Anthony, a 2004 A&T graduate, said he pursued the project after realizing that the racial unrest  was an important part of North Carolina’s history that few people had ever heard about. “We were going to do a small 30 minute piece on it, but once I got into the research, I discovered that this story is much bigger than that, and I felt cheated on why I’d never heard of this event,” he said.

“Walls That Bleed” uses personal interviews and graphic art to detail three days in May 1969 when a student body walk-out at Greensboro’s Dudley High School led to a confrontation with city police. The Dudley protest started over the election of the school’s new student body president, Claude Barnes. At the time, administrators considered Barnes too radical and nullified the election results.

The Dudley protest, which spread to nearby A&T, eventually escalated into a violent clash between university students and some 650 National Guard soldiers, many of them armed. For two days, police and guardsmen exchanged gunfire with students on the campus of A&T. The civil unrest ended with the arrest of more than 200 people and the death of A&T student, Willie Grimes.  Grimes, a 20-year-old college sophomore got caught in the crossfire, and was shot in the back of the head.  His death remains unsolved.

Anthony said he didn’t learn of the event until 2002, but he immediately knew that he had to produce the documentary. “I was scared that someone else would come in to tell the story and not tell it right,” he said.

For UNC’s School of Social Work, the film screening was an opportunity to raise racial awareness across the university community, especially following the election of the country’s first black president, said Travis Albritton, director of the School’s Triangle Distance Education Program  and chairman of the School’s diversity committee.
“I think that Walls That Bleed created an additional platform for instructors to have that discussion with students about how far we’ve come in 40-plus years but also what it is that we still have left to do,” Albritton said.

Supporting such a documentary project also speaks to the School’s “vision as change agents… committed to social justice,” said Professor Iris Carlton-LaNey, who was a freshman at A&T during the uprising.

“Essentially, by showing the film, the School of Social Work promoted sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression within the state's educational system - information that heretofore has been ignored, misunderstood and relegated to a historical footnote,” said LaNey, who also serves on the School’s diversity committee.

A discussion of the film and on race relations in North Carolina followed the documentary presentation. Claude Barnes, now an associate professor of political science at A&T, helped lead the discussion with Anthony, the filmmaker; Susan Parish, a School of Social Work assistant professor; and Rita Joyner, a doctoral student at UNC’s School of Education.

Long-term, Anthony said he hopes to submit the film to several film festivals and to eventually have it shown at every college and university across the country. “I think what people can learn from this part of history is that the fight is never done,” he said.