Today, April 16 at 4:00pm - The Sunflower County Freedom Project

The Langston Hughes African American Film Festival proudly presents the world premiere of Carmen Scott’s “The Sunflower County Freedom Project”. 

"The Sunflower County Freedom Project" is a documentary film about the afterschool program by the same name and its impact in Sunflower County, Mississippi.

Modeled after the freedom schools of the 1960s, the Freedom Project seeks to offset the county's inferior public education system and help its residents gain the freedom not yet gained: access to a quality education.

The Freedom Project exposes kids to the Sunflower County's rich history of civil rights activism in order to prove to them that overcoming adversity is not only doable, it's in their DNA. The lingering legacy of racism and segregation is very apparent in Sunflower County's still segregated school system.

When Brown v. Board forced the merger of the two legally segregated public schools, whites fled to makeshift private schools housed in warehouses and churches that they called academies. The academies are still in full effect and educate almost 100% of the white kids in Sunflower County leaving underfunded public schools for the black kids.

Only 11% of high school seniors in Sunflower County's public school go on to college. SCFP is trying to change those odds for the kids in their program and they're having a lot of success doing it.

Carmen Scott

The filmmaker, Carmen L. Scott, was a part of the Freedom Project in 2001 and 2002 and is excited for the opportunity to introduce audiences to Sunflower County, Mississippi, a place so foreign yet so utterly American.