Following the premiere broadcast of Not In Our Town: Light in the Darkness on PBS, many communities across the country joined the campaign against hate and intolerance by hosting screenings and using the film to start a conversation about hate and intolerance in their areas. 

On Feb. 1, 1960, four young black students sat at the whites-only Woolworth lunch counter in Greensboro, N.C., where they were refused service by staff and heckled by patrons. By fall, sit-ins spread to more than 100 Southern cities and historians estimate that as many as 100,000 participated in the non-violent protest. These couragous acts continue to inspire the anti-hate movement today.

'This Saturday, just two days before the federal Martin Luther King jr. holiday, the community in Billings, Mt. gathered amid freezing temperatures for the first and largest community photo.

By Ralph Lewin, President & CEO, California Council for the Humanities

This week of Hanukkah we in the Not In Our Town office remember another Hanukkah 16 years ago in Billings, Montana. A year of racist violence came to a head one bitterly cold night when a brick was thrown through a six-year-old Jewish boy's bedroom window, where he had placed the family's Hanukkah menorah. The town rose as one to say, Not in Our Town, and a national movement was born.

By Jody McDevitt, a resident of Billings, Montana