Plot

Built during the ugliest decade in Indiana history, built while the Ku Klux Klan literally ran the state and Hoosiers' everyday racist roots pushed deeper still, Indianapolis' all-black Crispus Attucks High School was designed to isolate, to denigrate, ultimately to fail. Instead it produced generals and scholars, surgeons and scientists, world-class musicians and athletes. Most important, over time these successes, and the grace that accompanied them, because a grass-roots agent for integration, winning over the younger generation of Indy's whites, changing the way many thought about race. Changing the face, quite literally, of a society. 'Attucks: The School that Opened a City' isn't an easy story. It's at times an outrageous story, at times a beautiful and uplifting one. It's finally a nationally important story, a microcosm of the injustices faced and overcome by African-Americans in the 20th century, and a national model -- even today, perhaps especially today -- of what can be done under the most difficult circumstances. Oscar Robertson, Gen. Colin Powell, Janet Langhart Cohen, Gen. Harry Brooks, A'Lelia Bundles, international music stars David Baker and Angela Brown and many others come together in a highly charged yet ultimately celebratory story of perseverance, resilience and courage.