Film about Mississippi School Integration Premieres at Barnard College - Higher Education

Film about Mississippi School Integration Premieres at Barnard College - Higher Education: NEW YORK – The documentary Forty Years Later: Now Can We Talk?, the story of the first African-American students to integrate a White high school in Batesville, Miss. in 1967, premiered with exactly the dialogue the filmmakers hope to promote.

Dr. Lee Anne Bell, the director of education at Barnard College, has taught and written about storytelling as a means of teaching about racism. Several years ago, when Cheryl Johnson, a 1969 graduate of South Panola High School in Batesville, Miss., received an invitation to a high school reunion for the very first time, she searched the Web to find someone who could help her and her African-American classmates tell the story of their experiences. Johnson found information about Bell’s book Storytelling for Social Justice: Connecting Narrative and the Arts in Antiracist Teaching and contacted Bell.