To mark the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has developed a special initiative, Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle. As part of the Endowment’s Bridging Cultures initiative, Created Equal uses the power of documentary films to spark public conversations about the changing meanings of freedom and equality in America.

Four outstanding documentary films, spanning the period from the 1830s to the 1960s, are centerpieces to this project. Each of these films was supported by the NEH, and each tells the remarkable stories of individuals who challenged the social and legal status-quo of deeply rooted institutions, from slavery to segregation.

Slavery by Another Name

Thursday, March 27
Westerville Senior Center
310 W. Main St.
6 p.m.
FREE

It was a shocking reality that often went unacknowledged, then and now: a huge system of forced, unpaid labor, mostly affecting southern black men that lasted until World War II. Based on the Pulitzer prize–winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name tells the stories of men, charged with crimes like vagrancy, and often guilty of nothing, who were bought and sold, abused, and subjected to sometimes deadly working conditions as unpaid convict labor. Interviews with the descendants of victims and perpetrators resonate with a modern audience.