Join us for a special free theatrical screening of Episode 8 of In Pursuit, a ten-part documentary telling the story of American history, society, and history through the lens of Philadelphia, then stick around for a post-film conversation with director Andrew Ferrett and writer Nathaniel Popkin, moderated by Prof. Stephen Vider, Bryn Mawr College.
Los Angeles has passed Philadelphia as the third largest city in the nation as legacy factories continue to bleed jobs. Concentrated Black poverty is on the rise, pointing to the limits of John F. Kennedy’s liberal agenda. Trade unions shut out Black workers and white residents who can flee to the suburbs and the Sunbelt.
Episode 8 brings to life the dramatic five years of the Civil Rights era, as North Philadelphia explodes in riot—the first of a long spate of upheavals to mark all American cities—and a new leader emerges, WWII veteran Cecil B. Moore, who takes over the Philadelphia NAACP. This is “Revolution,” animated on screen by best-selling author Lorene Cary, award-winning urban historian Thomas J. Sugrue, members of the Freedom Fighters, performing artist Ursula Rucker, television personality Chris Matthews, and baseball Hall of Famer Dick Allen.
Martin Luther King, Jr joins Moore’s tenacious desegregation protest movement at Girard College, an all-white school for boys surrounded by predominantly African American neighborhoods. The riot and the protest fuel the rise of police captain Frank Rizzo, now deputy commissioner. Rizzo wants “law and order.” Directly influenced by King and Moore, gay and lesbian Americans set out to claim rights denied to them in housing and the workforce. Beginning in 1965, four years before the events at Stonewall in New York’s Greenwich Village, dozens gather on July 4 at Independence Hall. The protest becomes the “Annual Reminder,” leading directly to the era of Gay Pride.
Filled with the voices of those claiming their freedom, Episode 8 reveals the strategies and frustrations, the aspirations and the hard realities, the visions and the backlash as Americans struggle for equality under the law. When Philadelphia high school students strike on November 17, 1967, demanding a voice in their own education, how will authorities react? And what will happen to their dreams for the future?
This screening is free. There is a limit of 2 tickets per customer.
