by Cieslafdn | Apr 21, 2014 | Ciesla Foundation
The AFI Theater in Silver Spring is screening a series of baseball films in March and April, including one of the Ciesla Foundation’s previous productions, The Life and Times of Hank Greenberg (1999). Their description is below:
THE LIFE AND TIMES OF HANK GREENBERG
April 6, 2014 at 5:15 pm
AFI Silver Theatre, Silver Spring, MD
Tickets $5!
In person: filmmaker Aviva Kempner
This Peabody Award-winning film is a humorous and nostalgic documentary about an extraordinary baseball player who transcended religious prejudice to become an American icon. Hammerin’ Hank’s accomplishments for the Detroit Tigers during the Golden Age of Baseball rivaled those of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig. America’s first Jewish baseball star was a beacon of hope to American Jews who faced bigotry during the Depression and World War II.
DIR/SCR/PROD Aviva Kempner. US, 1999, b&w and color, 95 min, 35mm. RATED PG
Co-presented by the Washington Jewish Film Festival and Women in Film & Video of Washington, DC.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 21, 2014 | School Restorations
A story was recently posted on AL.com about a Huntsville, Alabama museum’s plans to build a replica of a Rosenwald School according to original Rosenwald School plans. According to architect Greg Kamback, the four-room schoolhouse would “replicate the look of [a Rosenwald School] as much as possible on the inside and outside.” During the building process, Burritt on the Mountain museum solicited input from community members who had attended Rosenwald Schools in the area. When completed, the building would become a place for visitors to learn about the history of African American education in Alabama.
Back in September, we heard about another effort to rebuilt a Rosenwald School in Alabama. A group of students in Phenix City, Alabama, planned to rebuild a Rosenwald School in their town. Unfortunately, they contacted us a couple months later and indicated that their project had been put on hold indefinitely due to lack of funding.
Nevertheless, it is encouraging to see that, along with the numerous Rosenwald School restorations in progress, people are also attempting to rebuild examples of this vital piece of American history. For decades, many Rosenwald Schools suffered from neglect, and indeed thousands of them have been demolished since the end of the program in the 1930s. Perhaps public interest and engagement has turned a corner and many of the remaining Rosenwald Schools will be preserved.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 21, 2014 | Social Justice Work
I read in The New York Times about the recent renovation of the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. The museum, which is at the site of Dr. Martin Luther King’s assassination, commemorates the long pathway to Civil Rights for African Americans.
Among its many exhibits is one on Charles Hamilton Houston, a Civil Rights lawyer who we’ve written about on this blog. In order to mount his argument that separate education facilities were not equal in the Jim Crow South, Houston shot a good deal of 16mm footage of the conditions in the South during the 1930s, which is today stored in the National Archives in the Harmon Foundation Collection. Since Houston filmed several of the Rosenwald Schools, we plan to use some of this footage in our upcoming documentary on Julius Rosenwald’s life.
You can read more on the museum’s website. Prominently displayed there is a powerful quote by Houston:
“Maybe the next generation will be able to take time out to rest, but we have too far to go and too much work to do.”
Charles Hamilton Houston with Mary McLeod Bethune, from the outtakes of A Study in Educational Inequalities in South Carolina
Film still credit: National Archives, College Park, Harmon Foundation Collection, 200 HF 265×3
by Cieslafdn | Apr 11, 2014 | Rosenwald Fund
Last weekend, Maya Angelou was on hand for the unveiling of her portrait in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington D.C. The image of the poet and author was created by Ross Rossin and donated to the gallery by former U.N. ambassador Andrew Young, according to The Washington Post.
Angelou attended a Rosenwald School in Stamps, Arkansas. She described her experience growing up under segregation for the 1993 documentary The Great Depression. Although she said her school (the Lafayette County Training School) was “grand,” she remembered the hand me down books her school got from the white school in town, and how the students were expected to make repairs to the bindings. One of Angelou’s teachers saw her potential and was able to get her some new books:
I had never seen a new book until Mrs. Flowers brought books from the white school for me to read. The slick pages, I couldn’t believe it, and that’s when I think my first anger, real anger at the depressive and the oppressive system began.
We plan to incorporate parts of this interview in The Rosenwald Schools documentary.
by Cieslafdn | Apr 1, 2014 | Film Production
Edwin B. Henderson II, who we interviewed last week, shared a link to a short video made about his and his wife Nikki’s quest to establish the legacy of his grandfather Dr. E.B. Henderson, a historic basketball pioneer in Washington D.C.
After Mr. Henderson came across a box of papers, letters and photographs belonging to his grandfather, he began advocating for Dr. Henderson to be inducted into the National Basketball Hall of Fame. Finally, in 2013, that goal was achieved due to Edwin and Nikki’s hard work. Dr. E.B. Henderson’s home in Falls Church, Virginia has also been added to the National Register of Historic Places.
GVI of Washington D.C. has put together a lovely short feature on the Hendersons. You can watch the video here.
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