Dr. Sondra Gordy, Department of History, and Documentary Filmmaker Sandy Hubbard recently received a grant for $3,800 for “The Lost Year” Documentary Film Project.
The grant is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities through the Arkansas Humanities Council.
This grant will result in a one-hour documentary film on ?The Lost Year? showing aspects of the unknown and often unrecognized long-term consequences of the Little Rock Desegregation Crisis of 1957-1959.
Unlike the more familiar story of the nine young African-American youths, this story will recount a series of events in the aftermath of the 1957-58 school year. The ?Lost Year,? 1958-59, found 3,665 black and white Little Rock students locked out of their high shcools (Hall High School, Horace Mann High, Little Rock Central High School, and Little Rock Technical High) while their teachers worked in empty classrooms.
Denial of educational access to Little Rock?s youth profoundly affected thousands of families, intensified personal prejudices and ruptured an already divided community. The stories by race are compelling, and tell a powerful story in themselves. Academic access was denied to thousands, but numbers show that 93% of whites located alternative schooling, while 50% of the black students did not, foreshadowing another long-term consequence of racial integration.
Students and citizens alike were held in limbo, while Arkansas politicians succeeded in forestalling court-mandated school integration during this second year of the crisis.
The story will be told in a compelling way, serving as a collective memoir of teachers, students and families whose lives were profoundly affected by these occurrences. The personal recollection will be gounded within the chronology of events as the film examines and illuminates the Southern culture that shaped them.
Relying on archival footage, primary news media accounts and personal memorabilia within the context of the period, this fascinating untold story will finally complete the historical record of the Little Rock Desegregation Crisis.
According to Gordy, this is a relatively unknown part of one of the most significant events in Arkansas?s history and it deserves to be told. The project will serve students, teachers, and the public within the state, and will inform and provoke new perceptions in the wider audience beyond our borders. The audience for this project crosses all lines.
It will archive a moment in history that has yet to be documented. It will be available to all Arkansans, particularly Arkansas junior and senior high school students, as well as all acedemics, potentially reaching thousands of people. The completed documentary will be offered to local, statewide and national broadcast outlets, will be shown at the Hot Springs Documentary Film Festival, and will be entered in multiple documentary festivals across the country.
Copies of the video will be made available to all media centers and libraries in high schools and junior high schools across the state. In addition, there will be articles through the statewide media as the project develops, which will educate the communities about the project.
The film will be made available to AETN, which has shown all of Ms. Hubbard?s documentaries in the past, as well as statewide networks, such as KATV (which has also broadcast Ms. Hubbard?s films).
Also, it will be included in the Arkansas Humanities Council Resource Guide, and made available for any school, museum, and any other interested Arkansans. The Internet Web site will provide historical information about the documentary, as well as segments for video streaming.
Professional packaging and marketing materials, including press kits for documentary film festivals, will be produced. Efforts will be made to seek a national distribution network specializing in civil rights projects. We plan to develop a traveling exhibit to accompany the screening of the film.
