Exploring The Role Of The Filmmaker In Shaping History

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. - In Richard Wormser’s landmark four-part television series, "The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow," he explores segregation from the end of the Civil War to the beginning of the Ccivil Rrights Mmovement. On Monday, January Jan. 26, he will show clips from the series and offer his thoughts on how filmmakers approach history during a special presentation at 6:30 p.m. in room 306 of Kimpel Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

"The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow," first aired on PBS in 2002, was nominated for three Emmys and won the Peabody Award. In it, Wormser captures the lynchings, beatings, and oppressive laws that marked one of the most brutal periods in American history. The series moves from the segregation and disenfranchisement Southern blacks suffered under white supremacist laws and practices that became known as "Jim Crow" to the triumphs of the African Americans and the influential black leaders who fought against such oppression.

Included among the more than fifty films Mr. Wormser has produced are "The Elaine Riot: Tragedy and Triumph," a film focusing on the 1919 race riot in Phillips County, ArkansasArk., and "Farmville: An American Story," about a student strike in 1951 that became one of the Brown v. Board of Education cases.

His visit is being sponsored by the Department of History, the Arkansas Center for Oral & Visual History, the Department of Journalism, and the Blair Center of Southern Politics and Society in Fulbright College.