Here that freedom train coming, here that freedom train coming, well here that freedom
train.
There's a lot of different things that motivate me.
I think one, I'm motivated to tell stories that are not being told, that wouldn't be
told if I didn't tell them, but I also think as a filmmaker, I'm motivated by trying to
tell stories in a way that's entertaining, in a way that's artistic, in a way that's
new and different and using the technology in different ways.
So we're trying to figure out how to keep them engaged, but also hopefully engaged in
something that's meaningful.
They were in business or themselves, they were doing something, they were making other
colored women look beautiful.
They loved the company, they kind of glorified Madam C.J. Walker.
Like many in the black middle class, Abbott was enamored of the social graces and attempted
to use the paper to teach them to his readers.
He even published a list of rules for migrants' behavior.
Don't promenade on the boulevards in your hall-killing clothes.
Don't clean your fingernails and pick your nose on the street.
Don't flirt with the grocer, especially if your hair is still chunky and full of bed
lint.
He's a roller coaster and a lot of times we want to see, especially as African Americans,
we want to see history as being this kind of straight line upwards, we're uplifting
the race, we're headed towards better times and it's up to us to keep pushing and fighting
for change and for progress and when we don't, it kind of slips back down and when we do,
things change for the positive.
This Ivy League campus is one of these staging bases for an invasion of Mississippi by college
students.
The students are being recruited all over the United States from Harvard to Hawaii.
They will go to live in Mississippi this summer to fight for the Negro's civil rights.
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 actually got its birth during Freedom Summit.
It was signed in August of 1965 and one of the most important things it did was it abolished
literacy tests and it put voting in seven southern states under federal supervision.
If any county anywhere in this nation does not want federal intervention, it need only
open its polling places to all of its people.
No matter what culture you belong to, you know, there's stories and that's really important
to us.
I think it's just as important now as it ever was, I think, that so many times what's
happening now, I have young kids and I see them on their devices and they're not engaged
in stories, you know, and I feel like just watch a story, you know, because it has a
point, you know, it has a humanness in it that I think is really important for us.
Just to hear my name spoken, you know, on that stage is just amazing.
So, you know, it's humbling, but it's also inspiring, you know, hopefully it will inspire
me to keep going.
