Final Film of the Created Equal Series

The Wisconsin Historical Society will host the final film in a four-part documentary series, Created Equal: America’s Civil Rights Struggle, on Tuesday, April 22. Selected segments of Slavery By Another Name will air at 7 p.m. in the auditorium of the Society’s headquarters at 816 State Street in Madison. Admission is free.

Slavery By Another Name tells the tale of a huge system of forced, unpaid labor, mostly affecting Southern black men, that lasted until World War II. Based on the Pulitzer-Prize-winning book by Douglas Blackmon, Slavery By Another Name tells the stories of men, charged with crimes like vagrancy, and often guilty of nothing, who were bought and sold, abused, and subjected to sometimes deadly working conditions as unpaid convict labor.

University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor Will Jones will moderate a post-screening discussion with audience members. Through the Created Equal film series, the Society is commemorating the 50th anniversary of Mississippi Freedom Summer and the 1964 passage of the Civil Rights Act.

The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and the Bridging Cultures initiative have generously underwritten the film series.

Due to the film’s length, only segments of the program will air during the evening session, but the Society will make the all the films in the series available in their entirety in the Society’s Library Reading Room. They may also be viewed online.

For more information on the Created Equal film series, contact Rick Pifer weekdays from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. at 608-264-6477 or Gayle Martinson 608-264-6535 Monday through Thursday from 4 to 9 p.m.