Free Showing of Civil Rights Documentary Set for Doylestown

A "missing chapter in our nation’s record of the Civil Rights movement" will be illuminated on Thursday in Doylestown.

"Standing on My Sisters' Shoulders" documents the movement in Mississippi in the 1950s and 60s from the point of view of the women who lived it and led it.

It will be shown at Doylestown Borough Hall on Thursday night from 7 to 9 p.m. The showing is free and open to the public.

The event is organized by local community activist, Marlene Pray and sponsored by the CB Cares Educational Foundation, Second Baptist Church of Doylestown, the Doylestown Historical Society and Creating Beloved Community.

The film tells the stories of three black women who fought for change in Mississippi during the Civil Rights movement.

Unita Blackwell was a sharecropper who eventually became the first black female mayor in Mississippi. During the Civil Rights movement, she worked for voting rights and was arrested more than 75 times, according to promotional material for the film.

Flonzie (Goodloe) Brown-Wright has seen firsthand the efforts to suppress voting rights. When Brown-Wright tried to register to vote, she was asked to define "habeas corpus," as part of the registration form only black Mississippians had to answer. When she didn’t know what it meant, she was told she could not register. She studied the Mississippi constitution and returned to successfully register to vote, "vowing that she would get the job of the man who denied her the right to vote." She later did, becoming the first black woman to be elected county registrar.

Mae Bertha Carter, a sharecropper, vowed that her 13 children would not be relegated to picking cotton. She would make sure they got the education that she could not. The Carters were among the first to integrate Drew County Schools, where the Carter kids "were tormented and shunned by the other students." Yet they persevered, graduated from high school, and went on to earn college degrees.

To learn more about the film, visit its website or contact Pray 267-879-2602 or marlenepray@gmail.com.