Brookline, Facing Civil Rights Proceeds Support BCF's Safety Net

By Tanner Stening

The work-in-progress documentary film, “Brookline, Facing Civil Rights,” is now available by video on demand (VOD) through this nonprofit publication. The film’s producer/director, R. Harvey Bravman, also produced and directed “Soul Witness, The Brookline Holocaust Witness Project” and founded the Brookline Youth Awards, now in its tenth year. All proceeds from “Facing Civil Rights” VOD sales will go to support the Brookline Community Foundation’s Safety Net Fund.

“Brookline, Facing Civil Rights” first screened as part of Brookline’s 2019 Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. On January 9, 2020, the film screened at the Coolidge, with all proceeds going to the Brookline Food Pantry. The sold-out evening included a panel discussion on the state of inclusivity today moderated by Paris Alston, producer of WBUR’s Radio Boston. Those who purchase the film on VOD will also receive the video recording of the panel discussion from that evening.

The Brookline Safety Net, funded by the Brookline Community Foundation and run by the Brookline Center for Community Mental Health, assists Brookline community members in crisis, covering the costs of rent, utilities, food, and other basic needs. The need for this safety net could not be more critical than during the COVID-19 pandemic response.

“BCF has been partnering with The Brookline Center for over a decade to provide emergency assistance to community members, with a goal of offering immediate relief along with individualized help accessing other resources,” said Frank Steinfield, BCF’s interim chief executive officer on the Brookline Community Foundation’s Safety Net Fund. “Our safety net model has scaled well during this unprecedented COVID crisis to help ensure that basic needs are met for our most vulnerable neighbors.”

All proceeds from VOD sales of “Facing Civil Rights” will go to the Brookline Community Foundation’s Safety Net Fund to provide for the emergency needs of community members.

“Brookline, Facing Civil Rights” is based on interviews with six Brookline residents who describe their experiences during the civil rights movement and what it was like for African Americans to move to a segregated Brookline during the 1960s. Gov. Michael Dukakis, who is also interviewed in the film, paints an unvarnished picture of Brookline’s racial and religious climate during this turbulent period.

Bravman’s film was very “powerful … intimate” and “excellent,” said Boston Globe Spotlight Team Editor Patricia Wen in 2019. “It made a large, cosmic issue very local. I felt like I was sitting in the living room, listening to these people talk.”

Wen said she appreciated the “mixing of the national reminders of the civil rights movement through the film’s archived photographs with local Brookline voices. “You got the impression that there was very little filter, and that you got to hear directly from them,” she said.

Testimony from the film aims at, among other things, Brookline’s discriminatory housing practices, which Dukakis investigated at the time. “Brookline, like the country, was racist,” Dukakis said in the film, “People of color had virtually nothing in this town. They didn’t live here; they weren’t welcomed … I mean, this town was just shut off to people of color.”
Featured in “Facing Civil Rights”:

• Ruth Ellen Fitch, Brookline’s first METCO Director, and the first black female to become a partner in a Boston law firm
• Bobbie Knable, dean of students at Tufts University from 1980 to 2000
• Julia Wilson, wife of the renowned artist, John Wilson
• Mark Gray, former general counsel for the Massachusetts Executive Office
• Diana McClure, co-Founder of the Freckles Association
• Michael Dukakis, former governor of Massachusetts and a “housing tester” in Brookline.

“Soul Witness, The Brookline Holocaust Witness Project” is also available on Video on Demand. Thirty percent of all “Soul Witness” video on demand sales will be donated to nonprofits dedicated to helping eradicate intolerance.

BrooklineHub.com is a 501C3 non-profit dedicated to reporting and commenting on life, culture and community in Brookline. As part of our mission, we advocate for non-profits vital in making this a better place to live, and by sponsoring and supporting events that promote community-building. We hold the belief that as a community, we should foster the well-being of all, remaining mindful of our young people, seniors, and underprivileged.