!st Film in Created Equal Series to Be Shown and Discussed This Coming Saturday!

To mark the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington , the Washington Twp. Public Library, 37 E. Springtown Rd, Long Valley, NJ will offer a screening and discussion with Dr Mark Krasovic , Associate Director of the Institute on Ethnicity, Culture, and the Modern Experience at Rutgers-Newark centered around the documentary Slavery by Another Name at the Library’s meeting room at 1:00 p.m. on Saturday, February 8, 2014..

It was a shocking reality that often went unacknowledged, then and now: a huge system of forced, unpaid labor, mostly affecting Southern black men, that lasted until World War II. Based on the Pulitzer Prize–winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name tells the stories of men, charged with crimes like vagrancy, and often guilty of nothing, who were bought and sold, abused, and subjected to sometimes deadly working conditions as unpaid convict labor.

This documentary is part of Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle, a powerful film set produced with NEH support. Each film tells remarkable stories of individuals who challenged the social and legal status quo of deeply rooted institutions, from slavery to segregation. The documentaries, The Abolitionists, Slavery by Another Name, The Loving Story, and Freedom Riders, include dramatic scenes of incidents in the 150-year effort to achieve equal rights for all. Freedom Riders received an Emmy in 2012, and The Loving Story and The Abolitionists have been nominated for Emmys in 2013. 

The Created Equal film set and public programs have been made possible by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, as part of its Bridging Cultures initiative, in partnership with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Call the Library at 908-876-3596 or visit www.wtpl.org for details.