Please help the Dorothy Cotton Institute produce a feature-length documentary
https://www.givegab.com/campaigns/move-when-the-spirit-says-move
We at the Dorothy Cotton Institute are excited to partner with Photosynthesis Productions (PSP), an Ithaca-based film company, to produce a documentary that will be a tribute to the life and ongoing legacy of Dr. Dorothy Foreman Cotton, a civil rights icon of the Southern Freedom Movement.
Dorothy Cotton served for eight years as Education Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and was the only woman on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Executive Staff. The centerpiece of her leadership was the Citizenship Education Program (CEP), a popular-education intensive that moved thousands of people from a mindset of “victim” to that of fully-engaged “citizen.” The CEP equipped grassroots activists throughout the southern United States with a grounding in their constitutional rights and how to use the principles of non-violent direct action. In a brutal context where racial segregation, hatred and the threat of terrorism were daily realities, CEP participants went on to risk their lives to register voters, organize communities, demonstrations, strikes and boycotts, run for office and ultimately overturn Jim Crow laws. The CEP is a model for popular education and movement building that has empowered freedom struggles across the globe.
This film will focus not only on Dorothy Cotton’s role with the CEP, but will also highlight several other unsung s/heroes of the movement whose names and contributions the public should know. Dorothy Cotton’s work on non-violence, the power of freedom songs and taking action did not end in the ’60s. The film will include interviews with her colleagues and friends, archival footage of her talks and workshops, and the impact of her remarkable life.
We hope to have this project finished by spring of 2020 and that it will inspire people to vote in the 2020 federal election. Please give generously to this wonderful effort!