Many thanks to Robert Fitzgerald for organizing a screening of our work in progress at the North Sarasota Library over the weekend. The event was held on Saturday, November 22, and the audience responded to the work in progress screening with warm applause. We were excited to hear from Robert about two of the audience members, Kate Harris and Lt. Col. George Hardy of the Tuskegee Airmen, have personal connections to the Rosenwald story.
Kate Harris is the daughter of Dr. Kenneth Clark, a noted African American educator, Civil Rights activist and psychologist who received a Rosenwald grant in 1940. Along with his wife, Dr. Mamie Phipps Clark (who received consecutive Rosenwald grants to study psychology in 1940, 1941 and 1942), Dr. Kenneth Clark contributed vital testimony in Brown v. Board of Education, where the Supreme Court found that school segregation led to a “feeling of inferiority” among black students.
Also joining the discussion was Lt. Col George Hardy of the Tuskegee Airmen. Lt. Col. Hardy trained at Tuskegee in 1944 at the Army air field funded by the Rosenwald Fund and served during World War II. The Rosenwald Fund’s involvement with the Tuskegee Airmen will be shown in the final cut of The Rosenwald Schools, scheduled to be released in 2015.
We’re so glad Robert Fitzgerald reached out to us about screening our work in progress. It sounds like he organized a wonderful event. Please contact cieslafdn@gmail.com if you would like to discuss screening the work in progress of The Rosenwald Schools at your upcoming event.