FREE film Screening - American Promise hosted by MLK Jr State Commission

310 San Pedro Drive Northeast,Albuquerque NM 87108

25 February, 2022

Description

American Promise Film Screening and Discussion with Youth Leaders. Free Parking. Dinner will be served. Please join The New Mexico Martin Luther King, Jr. Commission, The African American Performing Arts Center and NMPBS for a special FREE screening of the PBS documentary American Promise by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson. This event is a collaboration with POV, PBS' award-winning nonfiction film series. http://www.pbs.org/pov About the film: American Promise is an intimate and provocative account, recorded over 12 years, of the experiences of two middle-class African-American boys who entered a very prestigious--and historically white--private school on Manhattan's Upper East Side. The Dalton School had made a commitment to recruit students of color, and five-year-old best friends Idris Brewster and Oluwaseun (Seun) Summers of Brooklyn were two of the gifted children who were admitted. The boys were placed in a demanding environment that provided new opportunities and challenges, if little reflection of their cultural identities. Idris' parents, Joe, a Harvard- and Stanford-trained psychiatrist, and Michèle, a Columbia Law School graduate and filmmaker, decided to film the boys' progress starting in 1999. They and members of the large Summers family soon found themselves struggling not only with kids' typical growing pains and the kinds of racial issues one might expect, but also with surprising class, gender and generational gaps. American Promise, which traces the boys' journey from kindergarten through high school graduation, finds the greatest challenge for the families--and perhaps the country--is to close the black male educational achievement gap, which has been called "the civil rights crusade of the 21st century." Following the screening, join a discussion with a panel of young community leaders. Dinner will be served at 6 PM, the film will begin at 6:30. MASKS REQUIRED New Mexico PBS is one of the most watched public television stations in the country reaching almost 700,000 households each week with 20,000 members in central and northern New Mexico. newmexicopbs.org provides users with a place to interact, learn more, and connect with others and has over 80,000 page views per month. New Mexico PBS has extensive partnerships throughout the community. These partnerships include the K-12 community, higher- education, dozens of community service organizations and more.