 Based on the story, "See How They Run" written by Mary Elizabeth Vroman, a fourth-generation school teacher from the British West Indies, that ran in the June, 1951 issue of "The Ladies  Home Journal" and subsequently won that year s Christopher Award, 1953 s "Bright Road" has only one white actor, Robert Horton, in the cast. Not important now except in the context of the era. Jane Richards (Dorothy Dandridge) is a young 4th-grade teacher in the South that has a problem in her classroom with 11-year-old C.T.Young (Philip Herburn), a backward boy whose pride has made him a stubborn rebel and an exalted liar. Jane believes in him, discovers that he has an interest in nature when he spends his time watching a caterpillar in a tree trunk as it develops into a cocoon. C. T. is devoted to his family and also to little Tanya (Barbara Ann Sanders, real-life daughter of actress Lillian Randolph), who adores him. When Tanya, despite every effort on the part of Dr. Mitchell (Robert Horton)to save her, dies of virus pneumonia, the embittered C.T. stays away from school. When he returns and gets into a fight, he is punished by being sent into Coventry. But when a swarm of bees invades the classroom and panics the students, C.T. takes charge and, capturing the queen bee, leads the swarm outside and earns the praise of the school principal (Harry Belafonte). But C.T. has urgent business at hand; the cocoon is splitting and ready to emerge. He has been saving it for Tanya, but now presents it to Jane, who calls the other children to watch the unfolding miracle of nature.