NBC News in April 1962, by Walter Cronkite. NBC's vice president of news and public affairs, J. Davidson Taylor, was a Southerner who, with producer Reuven Frank, was determined that NBC would lead television's coverage of the civil rights movement. In 1955, NBC provided national coverage of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s leadership of the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, airing reports from Frank McGee, then news director of NBC's Montgomery affiliate WSFA-TV, who would later join the network. A year later, John Chancellor's coverage of the admission of black students to Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas was the first
Walter Cronkite "Dinosaur!" on A&E (not related to the documentary of the same title hosted by Christopher Reeve on CBS six years earlier), and a 1994 follow-up series, "Ape Man: The Story of Human Evolution". In 1995, he narrated the World Liberty Concert held in the Netherlands. Cronkite routinely hosted the Kennedy Center Honors from 1981 to 2002. Cronkite appeared briefly in the 2005 dramatic documentary "The American Ruling Class" written by Lewis Lapham; the 2000 film "Thirteen Days" reporting on the Cuban Missile Crisis; and provided the opening synopsis of the American Space Program leading to the events in Apollo 13