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.

The Loving Story

Thursday, February 13
Otterbein University Campus Center Lounge
100 W. Home St.
6 p.m.
FREE

Mildred and Richard Loving knew it was technically illegal for them to live as a married couple in Virginia because she was of African American and Native American descent and he was white. But they never expected to be woken up in their bedroom and arrested one night in 1958. The documentary brings to life the Lovings’ marriage and the legal battle that followed through little known filmed interviews and photographs shot for Life magazine. The Loving Story narrates the lives of Mildred and Richard Loving and their fight for the recognition of their marriage, all the way to the Supreme Court. The film’s immediacy derives from the inclusion of footage dating from the 1960s depicting the daily life of the couple and their three children while they were in hiding in a house in Virginia.