Grad Students' Documentary Film Of Negro Ghetto Televised Tonight

A report on Negro ghetto organization, filmed by two Harvard graduate students, will be televised by WGBH at 8 p.m. tonight.

The film, "Black Natchez," records the personal observations of Davied Neuman '62, research assistant in Social Psychology, and Edward Pincus, doctorial candidate in Philosophy. They spent four months in the summer of 1965 filming candid scenes of Negro emotional reaction to white threats and racial violence in the Mississippi town.

"Black Natchez" describes the Negro community's shift from apathy to action in civil rights.

During that summer, NAACP leader George Metcalf was injured in a bombing. At once the community was aroused. Mississippi's Freedom Democratic Party competed with the NAACP to organize Negroes for protection. The film records the conflicting emotions of fear, anger, and suspicion that followed.

Neuman and Pincus have spent the past year editing 40 hours of film clips. Recently they returned to Natchez to film reactions to the murder of civil rights leader Wharlest Jackson, February 27.

The Harvard pair conceived the idea of making a documentary film in December of 1964. Foundation grants and individual gifts, totaling $40,000, enabled them to rent a house in the Natchez ghetto, live as members of the Negro community, and make the film.

"We wanted to show things as they really happened without the intrusion of cameras and strangers," Neuman said. "We were after material which would have meaning for the general public, but as a serious sociological study."

National Educational Television purchased the documentary for distribution to its 125 stations, including WGBH.