Through the efforts of Professor Umeme Sababu, Edinboro University is one of 473 institutions across the country awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) that includes a packaged set of NEH-funded films on Civil Rights history, accompanied by programming resources to guide public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in U.S. history. Titled “Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle,” the program was developed as part of the NEH’s “Bridging Cultures” initiative to mark the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation.
The grant includes a monetary stipend to facilitate the programming of the documentaries.
“Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle” is an initiative of the NEH that uses the power of documentary films to encourage community discussion of America’s civil rights history. “More importantly, the series of film provides a greater understanding of the complexity of the movement and challenges the often myopic view that the Civil Rights movement began with the Montgomery Bus Boycott and ended with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.” stated Professor Sababu. NEH has partnered with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to develop support materials for the institutions awarded the grant.
The documentaries – “The Abolitionists,” “Slavery by Another Name,” “Freedom Riders” and “The Loving Story” – include dramatic scenes of incidents in the 150-year effort to achieve equal rights for all. Each of the films was produced with NEH support, and each tells remarkable stories of individuals who challenged the social and legal status quo of deeply rooted institutions, from slavery to segregation.
“These films chronicle the long and sometimes violent effort endured in the Civil Rights Movement to achieve the rights in the Declaration of Independence – life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – for all Americans,” said Professor Umeme Sababu of Edinboro’s History, Anthropology, and World Languages Department. “We are pleased to receive a grant from NEH to provide programming around these films.”
Reprinted from a press release issued August 29, 2013.