Sunflower County Film Academy Awarded Southern Poverty Law Center Grant
CLEVELAND, MS - APRIL 16, 2024 - A summer workshop designed to teach high school students in the Mississippi Delta Digital Arts skills and the importance of local civil rights activists like Fannie Lou Hamer has received a grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
The $20,700 grant, issued by the Learning For Justice Educator Fund (LFJ) - an educational branch of the SPLC - will support the 2024 Sunflower County Film Academy (SCFA) to be held in Cleveland, MS June 3 - 21. The SCFA partnered with the Delta Arts Alliance and the Cleveland School District on this effort.
Students work with filmmaker and instructor Ben Powell of Broken Arm Studio at the historic Ellis Theatre in Cleveland in 2023. Powell and filmmaker Glenn Payne of Dead Leaf Productions will work with students for the 2024 Sunflower County Film Academy.
Prior workshops have been held in Fannie Lou Hamer’s native Sunflower County and Tallahatchie County. The student’s class films have been official selections in local and national film festivals and featured interviews with local activists and historians.
A STEM program, the SCFA was founded in 2018 by Jed Oppenheim, Project Manager of the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and filmmaker Joy Davenport as part of the K-12 educational curriculum for the award-winning film, Fannie Lou Hamer’s America. Davenport was the director and editor of the film that premiered on PBS and WORLD Channel in February 2022, and allows voting and human rights advocate, Fannie Lou Hamer, to tell her own story in her own words by means of archival interviews and footage.
A fierce proponent of education, Hamer fought to bring the first Head Start program to Mississippi in the late 1960s.
While the SCFA workshop is open to all students, its purpose is to introduce more students of color to career options in the filmmaking industry. The free workshop recruits up to 15 students from local high schools and the instructors, who are professional filmmakers, work with them using professional grade production equipment. Students are taught the aesthetics of making short films and videos from start to finish while learning to work together in teams and express themselves creatively.
LFJ Program Manager Jey Ehrenhalt
Students also learn about the fight for equal rights in the Mississippi Delta and the atrocities local activists like Hamer and others endured at the hands of white southern supremacists. And they are encouraged to investigate how they can fortify their communities and counteract racial inequity.
Founded in 1971, the SPLC ensured that the promise of civil rights for everyone became a reality. The LFJ was founded 20 years later and has maintained a strong foundation of providing educational resources and expanded engagement opportunities for communities, especially in the South.
“Especially in our current educational climate, it’s crucial to support community endeavors where students can come together to grapple with, learn from, and reflect on important historical legacies and truths,” said LFJ Program Manager Jey Ehrenhalt. “Learning for Justice is thrilled to act as a partner in engaging in this work.”
In 2019, the LFJ funded a project at Leland High School highlighting the works of Fannie Lou Hamer.
The mission of the LFJ is to be a “catalyst for racial justice in the South by working with educators and students through community engagement, culture, and curriculum and providing a space where people can harness collective power and take action.”