Media Alert
SPELMAN COLLEGE PREMIERES ‘PASSING THE TORCH TO AMERICA’S YOUTH’
ATLANTA (Oct. 8, 2008) The Spelman College student chapter of American Women in Radio and Television will premiere the Gateway docudrama “Passing the Torch to America’s Youth,” a film that explores the historic 1965 Selma to Montgomery voting rights march and “Bloody Sunday” on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, when more than 600 demonstrators were brutalized by state and local police. This event led to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. After the film, there will be a Q&A with icons of the Civil and Voting Rights movements, including:
• Mrs. Amelia Boynton, age 97, founder of Selma’s Voting Rights League and organizer of the 1965 marches from Selma to Montgomery
• Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), leader of the march from Selma to Montgomery
• Rev. C.T. Vivian, chairman of the Voting Rights Museum (Selma), and Freedom Rider
• Dr. Bernard Lafayette, youth leader of the Voting Rights marches
Spelman is the first stop for the film, which will be shown at other colleges and universities around the country.
WHEN: Oct. 14, 2008, at 6 p.m.
WHERE: Sisters Chapel, Spelman College
WHO: Created by Atlanta producers James and Genise Brown, the film documents the fortitude and determination of the activists who fought tirelessly to help Black Americans secure the right to vote.
WHY: As the presidential race, the most historic election this country has ever seen, heads into its final weeks, this film serves as a catalyst to alert all Americans of the importance of exercising their right to vote. The film features interviews with Selma Mayor James Perkins; Alabama State Sen. Hank Sanders; J. L. Chestnut, Selma’s first African American attorney; Joann Bland, co-chair of the Voting Rights Museum; and cameos by rapper Christopher “Ludacris” Bridges, Judge Glenda Hatchett, the Rev. Dr. Gerald Durley, comedian Bruce Bruce, and former Miss USA, Kenya Moore.
To learn more about the movie visit, http://www.passingthetorchmovie.com/
About Gateway Educational Foundation
“Passing the Torch to America’s Youth” is produced by Gateway Educational Foundation, a
501(c) 3 Atlanta-based nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving chapters of our nation’s civil rights history on film and in literature, particularly for schoolchildren and those who are not aware of the struggles for social and political equality in the United States of America from the 1940’s to the 1960s.
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Spelman College:
Founded in 1881, Spelman College is the only historically Black college in
the nation to be included on the U.S. News and World Report's list of top
75 "Best Liberal Arts Colleges — Undergraduate," 2005. Located in Atlanta,
Ga., this private, historically Black women's college boasts outstanding
alumnae, including Children's Defense Fund Founder Marian Wright Edelman;
U.S. Foreign Service Director General Ruth Davis; authors Tina McElroy Ansa and
Pearl Cleage and actress LaTanya Richardson. More than 83 percent of the
full-time faculty members have Ph.D.s or other terminal degrees and the
student-faculty ratio is 12:1. Annually, nearly one-third of Spelman
students receive degrees in the sciences. The students number more than
2,186 and represent 43 states and 34 foreign countries. For more
information regarding Spelman College, visit: www.spelman.edu.
