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 events that alter and illuminate our times ... and you were there." In 1971, the show was revived and redesigned to attract an audience of teenagers and young adults, hosted again by Cronkite on Saturday mornings. In 1957, he began hosting "The Twentieth Century" (eventually renamed "The 20th Century"), a documentary series about important historical events of the century composed almost exclusively of newsreel footage and interviews. A long-running hit, the show was again renamed as "The 21st Century" in 1967 with Cronkite hosting speculative reporting on the future for another three years. Cronkite also hosted "It's News to Me",