William Peters, a journalist and award-winning documentary film producer who chronicled American race relations during the turbulent years of the mid-20th Century, died Sunday in Boulder, Colo. He was 85.
A resident of Lafayette, Colo., Mr. Peters had lived for many years in Guilford, Conn.
The cause of death was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, his daughter Jennifer Peters Johnson said.
Mr. Peters was best known for the documentary “A Class Divided,” which he produced, directed and co-wrote. Originally broadcast on PBS’ “Frontline” in 1985, it told the story of Jane Elliott, a small-town Iowa schoolteacher whose stark, pragmatic lesson about racial discrimination — to prove a point, she treated her students differently according to the color of their eyes — was deeply affecting and deeply divisive.
“A Class Divided” won an Emmy Award for outstanding informational, cultural or historical programming.
Four of Mr. Peters’ other films earned George Foster Peabody Awards: “Storm Over the Supreme Court” (CBS, 1963); “Africa” (ABC, 1967); “Eye of the Storm” (ABC, 1970), an early documentary about the Jane Elliott story; and “Suddenly an Eagle” (ABC, 1976), about the ideological roots of the American Revolution.
William Ernest Peters Jr. was born in San Francisco on July 30, 1921. After working in public relations Mr. Peters began a career as a freelance journalist. Among his books are “The Southern Temper” (1959); “For Us, the Living” (1967), written with Myrlie Evers, about her husband, the slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers; and “A Class Divided” (1971), a companion volume to “Eye of the Storm.”
