[The 90’s Election Specials raw: Paul Tsongas at Harper High School]

Raw footage for The 90's election specials. Sen. Paul Tsongas visits Harper High School, a predominately African-American school on the South Side of Chicago. This footage was shot by a student from Harper High as part of the official school coverage, and then dubbed by Skip Blumberg, who also taped the event.

00:00Copy video clip URL General shots of the high school and the ROTC waiting to greet Tsongas interspersed with extended periods of static.

02:17Copy video clip URL Tsongas sits down privately in a lounge with a handful of students and teachers and talks about his platform. The school principal discusses the economic empowerment program at Harper High School, which is designed to show students the types of businesses they could open as adults and give them practical job training. There is a lot of static in the audio as well as background noise.

9:43Copy video clip URL Tsongas appears in front of the students and press to give his speech, which was also recorded on Skip Blumberg’s footage. The tape cuts many times: Tsongas gives an extremely dry speech about the uncomfortable subjects of his own-near terminal cancer and his mother’s early death from tuberculosis. He does not sound like a politician, and is unenthusiastic about his topics. After discussing cancer, Tsongas goes into a lengthy explanation of his tax policies, all for an audience who is mostly interested to hear what he plans to do for urban schools. “I’m not Santa Claus. So no middle class tax cut.”

22:22Copy video clip URL After the speech, Tsongas signs pamphlets for and poses with students.

23:52Copy video clip URL End of tape.