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Page C-10 Montclair Film Festival Thursday, April 27, 2017 Higher education means rising
The story of black colleges and universities in new documentary
by ANTOINETTE MARTIN for Montclair Local
“Forget what you think you know” about the story of historically black colleges and universities before seeing Stanley Nelson’s new documentary on the subject, advises the program note for the Montclair Film Festival screen- ing of the film on Friday, May 5, at The Wellmont Theater.
That is an astute suggestion, Nelson told Montclair Local in a phone inter- view. “In fact, I think I’ll steal that line,” said Nelson, who will attend the show- ing of “Tell Them We Are Rising,” and take questions from the audience. The African-American filmmaker, recipi- ent of a MacArthur “genius grant” and co-founder of Firelight Films, said he personally learned a lot of new things in working on “Tell Them We Are Ris- ing: The Story of Black Colleges and
Universities.”
Nelson’s film uses original photos
and footage of the little-known past at “HBCUs,” as they are referred to by scholars — weaving them into a story replete with heady debate, tragic mo- ments and crescendos of personal and social progress. The movie will be aired on public TV in early 2018.
Interviews with current historians and people who were there “when” en- liven the past, complemented by inter- views with people who currently attend and teach at schools such as Howard, Fisk, Florida A & M University, Spel- man College, and Southern University and A & M College.
The documentary takes its title from the words of retired Union Army Gen. Oliver Otis Howard, to the Storrs School in Atlanta in 1868. Howard asked students what message he should take to the North about the fate of black col-
An early graduating class at an HBCU.
leges. Student Richard Robert Wright Sr. , who was born a slave, replied with the words “Tell them we are rising.” In the beginning, HBCUs were the “only colleges black people could go to,” Nel- son said. Prior to the Civil War, the law forbade teaching slaves.
Booker T. Washington is quoted in the film recalling carrying his mis- tress’s books to school, and stopping at the door: “I had the feeling that to get into a schoolhouse and study would be about the same as getting into para- dise.”
After the Civil War, first missionar- ies and then the AME (African Meth- odist Episcopal) church stepped up to start black colleges, many of which eventually became public universities. There were 86 in the South by the late 1800s — and there are more than 100 today.
The film documents how repression and wariness of educating black people thrived post-war: Nelson interviewed historian Edna Green Medford about an attempt to establish a black college in New Haven, where Yale University had been growing ivy on its walls since 1701. The authorities said no; a black in- stitution would “lower the town’s mor- als.”
“Everyone knows about the shoot- ings at Kent State” in 1970, said Nelson, who is 65 and grew up in New York. Even he did not know about the police
COURTESY MONTCLAIR FILM FESTIVAL
Friday, May 5, 7 p.m.
Wellmont Theater, 5 Seymour St.
Director Stanley Nelson in attendance Followed by House Party
The screening will be followed by a ticketed “House Party” celebrating black cinema at The Wellmont, running from 9 p.m. to mid- night, which Nelson will attend.
Also, Nelson said a “digital yearbook” has been established for attendees of HCBUs, who may upload pictures, letters, and dia- ries, about their lives as students.
HBCUrising.com
killings of two students at Southern University in 1972 after a takeover of the administration building and the arrival of troopers with tear gas and a tank. Nelson unearthed footage of the two dead young men’s blood being washed from the pavement outside the president’s office.
The struggle for equal educational funding and across-the-board access is as urgent as ever, the film suggests.
Where will HBCUs be 10 or 20 years down the road?” Nelson said. “That’s an interesting question. Maybe we can discuss that after the screening Satur- day night.”
‘Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story of Black Colleges and Universities’
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