A filmmaking team is making a documentary about a Virginia school desegregation case that got lost among the big news at the time, but had a lasting impact as a blueprint for integration cases around the country.

The film centers around Charles C-Green versus County School Board of New Kent County. Oral arguments before the Supreme Court happened in April 1968, the day after Martin Luther King was assassinated. A week after the decision was handed down, US
Attorney General Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

Despite the case's relative obscurity, scholars say it is second only to Brown versus Board of Education in importance to school desegregation. The decision in Green ordered the local School Board to develop a plan to convert promptly to a school system integrated by race.

Jody Allen and Brian Daugherity have teamed up with screenwriter David Essex on the project -- and they hope the documentary will eventually air on public television or the History Channel.

(Copyright 2004 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)