“Slavery by Another Name,” a film screening in the Created Equal series, is presented by the Branigan Cultural Center on Thursday, April 14 at 6pm.
Directed by Sam Pollard, produced by Catherine Allan and Douglas Blackmon, written by Sheila Curran Bernard, this National Productions project is based on the 2009 Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Blackmon. Slavery by Another Name challenges one of our country’s most cherished assumptions: the belief that slavery ended with Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. The documentary recounts how in the years following the Civil War, insidious new forms of forced labor emerged in the American South, keeping hundreds of thousands of African Americans in bondage, trapping them in a brutal system that would persist until the onset of World War II.
Based on Blackmon’s research, “Slavery by Another Name,” spans eight decades, from 1865 to 1945, revealing the interlocking forces in both the South and the North that enabled this “neoslavery” to begin and persist. Using archival photographs and dramatic re-enactments filmed on location in Alabama and Georgia, it tells the forgotten stories of both victims and perpetrators of neoslavery and includes interviews with their descendants living today. The program also features interviews with Douglas Blackmon and with leading scholars of this period. Major funding for “Slavery by Another Name” is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, The Coca-Cola Company, and the CPB/PBS Diversity and Innovation Fund.
Branigan Cultural Center is located at 501 North Main Street and is open Tuesday through Friday from 10am to 4:30pm, Thursday from 10am to 8pm, and Saturday from 9am to 4:30pm. Visit http://las-cruces.org/museums or call 575-541-2154, for additional information. If you need an accommodation for a disability to enable you to fully participate in this event, please contact the museum 48 hours prior to the event.
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