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Kenya King
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Perimeter College
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CLARKSTON, Ga.—Pulitzer Prize-winning author and film producer Douglas A. Blackmon will lead a talk about segregation in America following a special screening of his documentary “The Harvest” on Thursday, Oct. 19 at 6 p.m. on the Georgia State University Perimeter College Clarkston Campus.
Perimeter College’s Sarah Larson Lecture Series and Susan Thomas Lectureship will co-host the screening as part of their 2023-2024 lineup.
“The Harvest” explores what happened when the small Mississippi town of Leland integrated its public schools in 1970. Told through the remembrances of students, teachers and parents, the film shows how the town and America were transformed. In “The Harvest,” Blackmon looks back on his experience as a member of the first class of Black and white children to attend all 12 grades together.
“In many ways, I have been working on this story most of my life, ever since I first asked myself as a child why the Black kids all around my town faced so many more obstacles than me and all the white kids I knew,” Blackmon said.
Pulitizer Prize-winning author and film producer Douglas A. Blackmon.
“We started on the film 10 years ago, after I went back for the graduation ceremony on the 30th anniversary of my class. When I saw how much had been lost in the public schools, and how deeply that affected the town, it was clear there was an important story that needed to be told.”
“The Harvest” debuted on PBS’s American Experience broadcast in September. In 2009, Blackmon won a Pulitzer Prize for his book “Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II.” In addition to his writing and filmmaking, Blackmon directs the Narrating Justice Project at Georgia State University in Atlanta, where he also serves as a Professor of Practice in the Creative Media Industries Institute.
“The Harvest” is co-sponsored by the Honors College, Georgia State University’s Creative Media Industries Institute and the Narrating Justice Project. The screening and Q&A are free and open to the public at Perimeter’s Jim Cherry Auditorium (CL-1100) located at 555 N. Indian Creek Dr. in Clarkston. Contact Jennifer Meeks at [email protected] or Rhiannon Evangelista at [email protected] for more information.