SHAPING AMERICA
FINAL SCRIPT
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Lesson 7: “Making a Revolution”
Gretchen Dyer
Julia Dyer
Final
6 February, 2001
Lesson 7
“Making a Revolution”
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VISUAL
Final Script
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AUDIO
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UNIT OPENING
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1. VIVID MONTAGE of images of violent protest--e.g.: 1) riots in bread lines during the
Depression; 2) the Cultural
Revolution in China; 4) the student anti-war demonstrations of the 1960s;
5) MLK’s March on
Washington; 6) the toppling of the Berlin Wall; 7) Tiananmen
Square; INTERCUT with images from the American,
Revolution
2. GORDON WOOD on camera; intercut with above
MUSIC UP
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GORDON WOOD: Revolutions have many different interpretations For some people it’s just a change of government, a violent change usually, an overthrow of government. I think for others, it’s more than that. It’s not simply a change in government but a change, a fundamental change in the society and social relationships. 18
3. EDWARD COUNTRYMAN on camera; intercut with opening images 19
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EDWARD COUNTRYMAN: What drives people to get involved is somewhere between hope and fear, vision and desperation. People get involved for all sorts of reasons because revolutions are
Lesson 7
“Making a Revolution”
VISUAL
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Final Script
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2
AUDIO
1 never, never simple things.
4. GORDON WOOD on camera
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GORDON WOOD: I suppose it’s a sense of being aggrieved, of feeling that the existing order is unfair, unjust, and something has to be changed. A willingness to risk one’s life eventually, ultimately, for changing the order.
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5. EDWARD COUNTRYMAN on camera; intercut with opening images 8
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6. SHEILA SKEMP on camera; intercut with images of
American colonists
EDWARD COUNTRYMAN: It’s a matter, I think, of a coalition of people coming together and ultimately agreeing on a great big question.
Should we still have a monarchy in France?
Should we break from Great Britain or stay with
Great Britain? And people approach that question from different points of view.
15 SHEILA SKEMP: The Americans in the 1760’s,
16 1770’s were ripe for revolution, though I don’t
17 believe they knew it at the time. They would
18 have been horrified. They were proud to be
19 Englishmen, and I think that’s what we forget.
20 They loved being English, but looking back, we
21 can see that the conditions were there if the right
22 things happened or the wrong things happened,
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Lesson 7
“Making a Revolution”
VISUAL
•
Final Script
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3
AUDIO
1 depending upon which side you were on.
7. JON BUTLER on camera; intercut with colonial images
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JON BUTLER: Before 1776, Americans had almost unwittingly, without any planning, effected a revolution that transformed the nature of the old 17th century colonies.
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8. Sheila Skemp on camera; intercut with images of Magna
Carta, John Locke, etc.
First of all, Americans had…developed a new political order. They effectively developed legislatures. And American politics was marvelously participatory in its character.
11 SHEILA SKEMP: They also were steeped in the
12 English tradition of rights. They knew about the
13 Magna Carta. They knew about John Locke’s
14 notion that we all had certain natural rights—life,
15 liberty, and property—that we had the right to
16 revolution.
9. JON BUTLER on camera; intercut with images of colonial
Christianity, slave religious practices, politics, etc.
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JON BUTLER: When you add together a new kind of political order and American materialism, and the development of a widely broadcast New
World economy, and when you add to that then different nationalities, you had a society that
