William Elwood

The film documents the untold story of Charles Houston, a black, Harvard-trained lawyer who began fighting for equal rights in the 1930s but died before seeing some of his work result in the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision, Brown v. Board of Education.

Elwood attributed his involvement in the civil rights movement to a growing personal awareness of racial bias in the 1950s and '60s.

A native of Evanston, Ill. , Elwood was a graduate of Northwestern University and received his Ph. D. from the University of Chicago. After joining the U. Va. faculty in 1964, he helped recruit black students and faculty.

In 1969 President Edgar F. Shannon Jr. appointed him as a special assistant to oversee programs to help African-American students have a smooth transition into the college experience here. A Renaissance literature scholar, Elwood also wrote articles on such subjects as substandard housing and served with numerous community projects, including Madison House, the Charlottesville Social Development Commission and the Charlottesville Housing Improvement Program. As associate dean of the Graduate School of Arts & Sciences for more than two decades, he was instrumental in establishing and strengthening African-American affairs programs and scholarly centers at the University.

With no formal filmmaking experience, he doggedly researched and personally helped to finance the 1990 public television documentary, "The Road to Brown," out of a determination to reach a wide audience with an important little-known piece of civil rights history.