When Does "The Long Walk Home" (1990) Take Place?
"The Long Walk Home" is a historical fiction film written by John Cork that released December 21st, 1990. So when is "The Long Walk Home" set?
It takes place in the years:
We know this because Miriam Thompson drives a Chevrolet Styleline Deluxe, an automobile line first manufactured in 1941 AD. So it must be after or during 1941 AD.
1955 AD - 1956 AD
We know this because Miriam Thompson drives a Chevrolet Styleline Deluxe, an automobile line first manufactured in 1941 AD. So it must be after or during 1941 AD.
More specifically, it opens some short time before a major public transit protest boycott has begun in Montgomery, Alabama and in the real world Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. famously orchestrated the African-American community in a citywide protest boycott of the public transit bus system in Montgomery for over a full year: from December 5th, 1955 AD to December 20th, 1956 AD. (It can't be the 1900 AD Montgomery public transit boycott because of Mrs. Thompson's car.)
Furthermore, the second scene of the entire movie includes a time and place setting title card over the footage that tells us it's "Montgomery, Alabama 1955". At this point the bus is still being patronized by the African-American community so it must be before December 5th. The beginning of the protest itself is then shown. So it's early December of 1955 AD.
About one-quarter through the story, Mrs. Thompson says to Odessa Cotter, "And next week is Christmas." Several scenes soon afterward and almost to the halfway point depict Montgomery on the holiday itself celebrated annually on December 25th.
A bit past the halfway point in the plot, some of the Thompson family eats as a TV news broadcast anchorman announces: "In day 49 of the negro bus buycott"... Day 49 from December 5th would be January 23rd. Indeed, a calendar visible on the wall at the end of the same scene proudly displays its "JANUARY" page. So it clearly continues into January of 1956 AD and at the end of the narrative the boycott is still going so it must be during or before December, 1956 AD.
