The popular Maryland Lynching Memorial Project First Thursday Film Group returns on December 3 at 7p with a discussion of the acclaimed 2020 documentary on the life of civil rights icon: “John Lewis: Good Trouble”.
The discussion will be even more timely as it will take place just days after the national election. Writing in the NY Times, critic Ben Kenigsberg notes the film, “makes an urgent argument: that a new wave of voter suppression has threatened the rights that Lewis labored to secure.”
Says Georgia politician and voting rights advocate, Stacey Abrams, “John Lewis reminds us that the past is not past.”
Here is the review of the film by Ben Kenigsberg that appeared in the NY Times just weeks before the Congressman's death in July:
The civil rights leader and longtime Georgia congressman John Lewis surely requires no introduction, but "John Lewis: Good Trouble", a documentary from Dawn Porter, provides a solid one anyway, striking a good balance between revisiting Lewis’s most famous work as an activist and chronicling his life today.
Porter shows Lewis campaigning for Democratic candidates throughout the 2018 election cycle and takes us through a tick-tock of a recent day, even as she interweaves footage of episodes from his storied career. Lewis recalls becoming immersed in the philosophy of nonviolence in Nashville, where he and others fought segregation. The film shows him speaking at the March on Washington. Lewis shares a memory of being physically struck while marching in Selma, Ala.
Current and former colleagues — including Elijah Cummings, who died in October and to whom the film is dedicated — line up to praise him. Discussing an incident in which Lewis, as one of the Freedom Riders, was beaten bloody in Rock Hill, S.C., the House majority whip, James E. Clyburn, says he has often wondered what might have happened if he had been there, because he was never as tenaciously nonviolent as Lewis was. The documentary is only occasionally less than adulatory, as when recalling Lewis’s race for Congress in 1986 against his friend and fellow activist Julian Bond.
Although the film uses a conventional format, it makes an urgent argument: that a new wave of voter suppression has threatened the rights that Lewis labored to secure. That context gives older footage — of Lewis and Bond encouraging voter registration in 1971 in Mississippi, for instance — a renewed power.
We are honored to welcome these distinguished panelists to discuss the film:
Dan Rodricks is a long-time columnist for The Baltimore Sun, and a local radio and television personality who has won several national and regional journalism awards over a reporting, writing and broadcast career spanning five decades. In addition to his regular column in the Sun papers, Dan was the host of daily talk radio shows on both WBAL-AM and WYPR-FM and also presided over the celebrated weekly television program, Rodricks for Breakfast, on WMAR-TV. He is the author of three books, including "Father's Day Creek" (Apprentice House 2019)
Carl Snowden is a legendary civil rights and community activist, columnist and convener of the Caucus of African American Leaders. Fifty years ago, as a student, Snowden led a boycott of Annapolis High School to protest lack of African American faculty and curriculum. Carl was also instrumental in gaining a posthumous pardon from Maryland Governor Parris N. Glendening for John Snowden (no relation) who was executed in Annapolis in 1919
DeWayne Wickham began his journalism career in the summer of 1973 as a copy editing intern with the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch. Over the next 42 years, he worked for the Baltimore Sun, U.S. News & World Report, Black Enterprise magazine, CBS News, BET News and USA TODAY, where he wrote a nationally-syndicated opinion column for 30 years. He is a founding member and former president of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ), which gave him its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012. In 2016, he was inducted into the NABJ Hall of Fame.
You are encouraged to view the film prior to the discussion. The film can be streamed over a number of online services. Check here for further details:
https://www.johnlewisgoodtrouble.com/watch-at-home...
Admission to the film panel discussion is free but you must register here.As always, admission to the film discussion is free but you must register in advance.