Civil Rights Film Series

Join us throughout the month of January for a Civil Rights Film Series followed by Community Conversations about race relations.

January 2009
Saturday afternoons, 2 pm

Enoch Pratt Free Library, Central Branch
400 Cathedral Street
Baltimore, MD

January 10, 2009
Boycott
Boycott uses the fusion of scripted film, combined with real and fictional documentary footage, to dramatize the events that were triggered in Montgomery, Alabama on December 1, 1955, when Rosa Parks was arrested after refusing to surrender her seat on a public bus. Using Parks' courageous act as a rallying cry, a group of black leaders in the city quickly organized a boycott of Montgomery buses. In 1956 — nearly a year after Parks' defiant act — the Supreme Court struck down the city's bus-segregation laws as unconstitutional. The Montgomery boycott ended victoriously after 381 days — and the Civil Rights movement found its leader in Martin Luther King, Jr. More than the story of Rosa Parks, Boycott is a portrait of the practical evolution of the non-violent ideologies of young leaders like Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy.

January 24, 2009
4 Little Girls
4 Little Girls tells the tragic story of the bombing of a basement in a black Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 15, 1963, which killed four young girls: Denise McNair, Carole Robertson, Cynthia Wesley, and Addie May Collins. Interviews with the children's family members set up the scenario, and their memories of the explosion and aftermath provide the film with its most emotional moments. Director Spike Lee uses this personal tragedy to better study the racial attitudes of America during that era and goes on to describe the impact this incident had on the civil rights movement of the 1960s and beyond. The film also features interviews with notable celebrities and historians, including Bill Cosby, Walter Cronkite, Jesse Jackson, Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, and a rare candid appearance by former Alabama governor George Wallace.

January 31, 2009
CHISHOLM '72 — Unbought & Unbossed
1972 was an extraordinary year. Richard Nixon was president, running for his second, ill-fated term. The voting age had just changed from 21 to 18, and millions of new voters were expected at the polls. The Vietnam War was in full swing, as were anti-war protests, a burgeoning women's movement, and the rise of the Black Panther Party. Into the center of this maelstrom — shocking the conventional political wisdom — stepped Shirley Chisholm, a determined, rather prim and unapologetically liberal black woman with a powerful message: Exercise the full measure of your citizenship and vote. CHISHOLM '72 is a remarkable recollection of a campaign that broke new ground in politics, and truly reached out to 'the people.' This first-ever run by a woman and person of color for presidential nomination was not a polite exercise in symbolic electioneering. The New York Democratic congresswoman's bid engendered strong, and sometimes bigoted opposition, setting off currents that affect American politics and social perceptions to this day.