Of the many defining moments that capture the seismic change of the civil rights movement, the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom in the Summer of 1963 is among the most influential, representing one of the largest human rights rallies ever recorded in the US, drawing over 200,000 participants. The Bus, by lifelong activist and Academy Award-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (1922-2015), gives agency to the anonymous faces at the March, capturing in intimate detail the story of one small group of individuals that travelled across the country to stand in the shadow of the Washington Monument and demand equality and human rights for African-Americans.
Self-funded, produced and photographed by Wexler with a skeleton crew that included filmmakers Nell Cox and Mike Butler, this vérité documentary begins in San Francisco as an integrated group of 37 people, young and old, embark on a three-day cross-country road trip organized by the Congress of Racial Equality. Employing a raw, unobtrusive shooting style, Wexler and his 16mm Auricon sync-sound camera are never acknowledged (or seemingly noticed) by his subjects, as charged conversations and small but extraordinary moments of candour are gleaned on the journey: an elderly gentleman calmly details how a white mob tried to kill him the last time he was in DC, decades earlier; a white bus driver, a self-avowed ally of the cause, worries that the scope of protest may cause white Americans great anxiety; a young African-American man passionately calls out his fellow riders when they show apprehension at an unfamiliar stop, fearing confrontation by angry whites. The collective result of such scenes is a film of major consequence, a record of the everyday faces and voices behind a watershed moment in U.S. history. For film historians, The Bus also serves as a key example of Wexler’s early development as a singular, world-renowned film artist.

Mark Quigley and John H. Mitchell