“Inspiring Visions,” a film and conversation on education and human rights with Dr. Joyce Ladner, moderated by Hank Klibanoff, will be Dec. 4, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at The Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, located at 1440 Spring Street.
This event inaugurates a series of programs co-sponsored by The Breman Jewish Heritage Museum and The Center for Civil and Human Rights on the Promise of Cross-Cultural Dialogue and Understanding.
“Inspiring Visions” illuminates the Breman’s exhibition “Beyond Swastika and Jim Crow: Jewish Refugee Scholars at Black Colleges,” which tells the story of Jewish academics who, dismissed from their teaching positions in Nazi Germany and Austria, escaped to America. They found new lives as academics in the historically Black colleges of the Jim Crow South.
The exhibition and film “From Swastika to Jim Crow” (aired on PBS) reveal the deep empathy between the teachers and students of these two groups, each with a history of persecution. They joined forces in their search for freedom and opportunity through education, sharing together the early years of the Civil Rights Movement. The program coincides with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights’ annual programming that highlights the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
One prominent story in the exhibition and film is that of featured speaker Dr. Joyce Ladner and her professor at Tougaloo College, Dr. Ernst Borinski. He was a refugee from Nazi Germany who inspired her to pursue her education in the area of sociology. A renowned social activist and scholar, Ladner was the first woman president of Howard University. Her work has been foundational to understanding of the strengths of Black mothers and families, and articulated in her books Tomorrow’s Tomorrow and The Ties That Bind.
Klibanoff, is the Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of The Race Beat: The Press, The Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation. Klibanoff was managing editor for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution and deputy managing editor for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He is a journalism professor at Emory University.
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