On September 12, 2018, Humanities Texas will hold a screening in Austin 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 faculty from Huston-Tillotson University, Austin Community College, and The University of Texas at Austin. 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 Roland C. Hayes, director of the African-American Cultural Center and professor of history at Austin Community College; Andrea Holman, assistant professor of psychology at Huston-Tillotson University; and Leonard N. Moore, vice president of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement and George Littlefield Professor of American History at The University of Texas at Austin. The discussion will be moderated by Ricardo Ainslie, filmmaker and M. K. Hage Centennial Professor in Education at The University of Texas at Austin.
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.