FARMINGTON — Farmington Area Ecumenical Ministry’s annual service honoring Martin Luther King Jr. will be held at noon Monday, Jan. 16, at Old South Congregational Church, 227 Main St.
Two special events sponsored by FAEM will be hosted at Old South in honor of Dr. King. The first is a Special Service at noon at Old South. The guest speaker will be Professor Charles Nero, professor of rhetoric, African American studies and American cultural studies at Bates College. He will be talking about the role of Hollywood in the civil rights movement.
He teaches senior level seminars on the Harlem Renaissance for African American studies and The Interracial Buddy Film from The Cold War to Obama for the rhetoric department. He designed the Introduction to African American Studies course and has served as Chair of African American Studies. His other courses include Black Gay and Lesbian Literatures, Lesbian and Gay Images in Film, Minority Images in Film, and Black Pride and the 1970s. He is a founding member of the James Baldwin Society and serves on the Executive Board of the Collegium of African American Research.
His talk, entitled “White Fragility and The Civil Rights Movement by Hollywood,” is taken from his planned book, “White Redemption: History by Hollywood,” and is based on a course he teaches at Bates College.
The service will include special music from Patricia Hayden, Dan Woodward and Andy Buckland. A collection will be taken for New Beginnings, an organization that serves runaway and homeless youth.
The second event of the day at Old South Congregational Church will be the documentary film “Freedom Summer 1964.”
The event runs from 3 to 5:45 p.m., including the two-hour film and discussion to follow. The Rev. Doug Dunlap will lead the discussion. The program, which is free of charge, is sponsored by the Farmington Area Ecumenical Ministry. The public is invited to attend.
“Freedom Summer” draws upon archival film footage and current interviews to depict efforts by African-Americans to register to vote in Mississippi, where, at the beginning of 1964, fewer than 5 percent had been successful in doing so. In the summer of 1964, more than 700 college students from around the country joined Mississippi African-American leaders to assist with registration, encountering violence, intimidation, church burnings, and the deaths of three civil rights advocates. These events led to the 1965 passage by Congress of the Voting Rights Act.
The film was released on the 50th anniversary of that 1964 summer, premiering at the Sundance Film Festival in 2014. It won “Best Documentary” award at the 2014 Pan African Film Festival in Los Angeles.
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