Richards supported civil right activists during the 1960s in the SF Bay Area and in the south.  When segregationists bombed black churches in Alabama, thousands marched down Market Street to protest (Freedom March).   And when protesters marched and sat-in against segregated hiring in the Bay Area, Richards was there (Decision in the Streets).  And during the most dangerous times, Richards made two trips into rural Mississippi to help voter registration activities of SNCC (We’ll Never Turn Back and Dream Deferred).

Freedom March
1963, 10 min., black/white, 16 mm.
Freedom March focuses on the San Francisco protest march of May 26, 1963, sponsored by Bay Area Black churches and the labor movement in the shocked aftermath of the Birmingham, Alabama bombing of a Black church, killing five children. The film shows the march and the rally with speakers.

We'll Never Turn Back
1963, 31 min., black/white, 16 mm.
We'll Never Turn Back, produced by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC or `snick') was shot by Richards in Mississippi, in 1963 during the dangerous voter registration drives of that era. It shows Julian Bond, Bob Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer, Samuel Block, Charles McDew and other local civil rights leaders. It interviews black farmers and farm workers on their experiences (often bloody) trying to register to vote.

Freedom Bound
1963, 27 min., black/white, 16mm, sound.
Freedom Bound is the first version of We'll Never Turn Back which Richards produced on his own after his 1963 trip to the South. This version of the film contains the same interviews with SNCC personel and southern share croppers, but lacks SNCC editorials and some newspaper headline shots added later in the SNCC produced version.

Dream Deferred
1964, 34 min., black/white, 16 mm.
Dream Deferred was also produced by SNCC for its southern voter registration drive in 1964. Filmed in Mississippi and Alabama, it contains interviews with activist Amzie Moore, voter registrants and SNCC leaders, and features Fannie Lou Hamer's speech, including her famous line: "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Decision in the Streets
1965, 35 min., black/white, 16mm.
Decision in the Streets shows the tumultuous beginnings of the Bay Area civil rights and peace movements from 1960 to 1965. Segments include 1960's anti-HUAC demonstrations; Hands-off-Cuba demonstrations during the Bay of Pigs invasion and Cuban missile crisis in l962 & 1963; the 1963 march of 15,000 people protesting the Birmingham church bombings; mass arrests of protestors sitting in at the Sheraton Palace Hotel over racist hiring; the l964 anti-Goldwater Republican convention protests; the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley, California, and others.

Civil Rights Movement Footage
Not In Finished Film
This work (16mm, black & white) consists of photography of a civil rights protest march up Market Street during the Republican Convention held in 1964 in San Francisco. The march was addressed by James Foreman of C.O.R.E. who stood on the platform with Jackie Robinson, Nelson Rockefeller, his wife, Happy, and Henry Cabot Lodge.

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