Black History Month Festival Educational Film Screenings

Chargé d'Affaires D. Brent Hardt giving welcoming remarks to students attending Black History Month film festivalat the National Library Service, Bridgetown

By Chargé d'Affaires D. Brent Hardt
at National Library Service, Bridgetown
February 25, 2011

Mrs. Annette Smith, Director, National Library Service
Dr. Bonnie Wasserman, U.S. Fulbright film scholar
Ms. Tina Puckerin, Caribbean Tales Film Festival (post-film discussant)
Teachers and Students of Combermere and Queens College secondary schools

Good morning everyone, and welcome to the showing of the American film "Freedom Writers."  This is the last of a week of great films that we've been able to screen with the assistance of the National Library Service and in collaboration with Caribbean Tales to celebrate both Black History Month and the International Year for the People of African Descent.

This week's films were chosen because they highlight the struggle and success of African Americans to "fully enjoy economic, cultural, social, civil, and political rights" - one of the goals set by the UN for the International Year for the People of African Descent.  This is also a deep current running through Black History Month, celebrated in the United States each February. 

The United States is a multi-ethnic, multi-racial democracy.  Our strong ties of family and kin to the Caribbean extend back hundreds of years.  Over the 400-year history of the transatlantic slave trade, about twelve million Africans were brought to the Americas against their will, five percent of whom ended up in the United States.  While now the largest numbers of African descendents in the Western Hemisphere are in Brazil, the United States, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, people of African descent make up the majority of the Caribbean population.

During the International Year for People of African Descent, the United States is working at home and around the world to create awareness of, and respect for, the diverse heritage, culture, and contributions of African descendents. 

Our partnership with Caribbean Tales film festival in mid-March will highlight the richness of films being produced right here in the Caribbean, and even includes an "incubator" component that aims to bring local films to a genuinely global market.  We're also supporting the participation of African-American master film director Neema Barnette who will lead master classes for directors from the U.S. and the Caribbean region.  She will introduce her own feature film, "Run for the Dream: The Gail Devers Story," a truly inspiring story of an African-American woman who overcomes Graves disease to become a three-time Olympic champion.

Today's film is "Freedom Writers."  Filmed in 2007, it portrays the palpable racial tension in multi-cultural Los Angeles in the aftermath of the 1992 riots sparked by the acquittal of the police officers involved in the Rodney King case.  King was an African-American man who had been beaten by the police.  It also demonstrates the power of education to transform students in the hands of a gifted teacher, Erin Gruwell, who is played by Oscar winner Hilary Swank.  Gruwell is a new teacher from upscale Newport Beach in southern California, assigned to teach students labeled "unteachables" at Woodrow Wilson High School in Long Beach.  Like all great teachers, she reaches her students by relating the lessons to their own lives and by encouraging them to record their own experiences and to become "Freedom Writers."

Gruwell's struggle to teach these "unteachables" comes at great personal cost.  Her continued commitment to them and to her profession parallels the words of the great civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in his 1968 address "The Drum Major Instinct" in which he states:

Yes, if you want to say that I was a drum major, say that I was a drum major for justice; say that I was a drum major for peace; I was a drum major for righteousness.  And all the other shallow things will not matter... I just want to leave a committed life behind.    

Thank you for joining us here today to watch the film, and to hear about the "drum majors" great and small that make up the American experience, and especially the African-American experience.

Following the film, we're looking forward to hearing your thoughts and ideas, and to a rousing discussion.

Enjoy!