On September 13, 2018, Humanities Texas will hold a screening in Houston featuring excerpts from the forthcoming documentary film The Harvest. Following the screening, the film’s director, Douglas A. Blackmon (Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II), will participate in a panel discussion and Q&A session with local community members. Follow this event on Facebook.
Using archival film and footage shot by Blackmon and Academy Award-nominated producer Sam Pollard over two decades, The Harvest tells the story of one small Mississippi town’s struggle to integrate its public schools. Shown through the eyes of black and white children at the height of the civil rights movement, the film examines the transformation all of America would experience in the following years.
Blackmon himself was among the initial group of children in Leland, Mississippi, to attend racially integrated schools through all twelve years of public education. For many, the benefits of integrated classrooms were enormous, yet within two decades most schools in racially diverse areas were once again deeply segregated. The Harvest explores the question: Why did this happen?
Following the preview, Blackmon will participate in a panel discussion with Karen Kossie-Chernyshev and Merline Pitre, professors of history at Texas Southern University; Howard E. Jefferson, chairman of Protectors Insurance and Financial Services, LLC. and Protectors Health Partners, LLC and member of the National Board of Directors of the NAACP; and John Guess Jr., CEO of the Houston Museum of African American Culture. The discussion will be moderated by Sibyl Avery Jackson, film producer and screenwriter.
This event is made possible by a Humanities and the Legacy of Race and Ethnicity in the United States grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.