VRA 2021: Film Screening of '63 Boycott
While we are not able to gather in Chicago in person, the Local Planning Committee would like to draw your attention to some elements of the VRA 2021 conference program that are specific to Chicago.
We are pleased and excited that our keynote speaker will be Steven D. Booth, an archivist, researcher, and co-founder of the Blackivists, a collective of trained Black memory workers who provide expertise on archiving and preservation practices to communities in the Chicagoland area. His work and research interests include born-digital audiovisual materials, Black cultural heritage preservation, community archives, and digital scholarship. Steven currently manages the audiovisual collection for the Barack Obama Presidential Library. Steven’s presentation, The Afterlife of What We Archive, will be Tuesday, Mar 23 from 11:00-12:30 pm (Central Time). The online event will be live-streamed via YouTube and open to the public (link forthcoming on the Conference website), however only registered conference attendees will be able to participate in the Q&A following the talk. All registered conference attendees will receive an email with a direct link to the Zoom Webinar.
On October 22 of 1963, over 200,000 students and 10,000 of Chicago’s citizens staged a walk-out and boycott of the public schools to protest segregationist policies of the Chicago Public Schools. The protesters formed marches that headed for downtown Chicago. Documentary filmmaker Gordon Quinn, then a University of Chicago student, filmed the protest. That footage formed the core of a 2017 documentary called ’63 Boycott, produced by Kartemquin Films of Chicago. ’63 Boycott will be the central theme of a conference session in which Gordon Quinn and Rachel Dickson of Kartemquin Films will discuss how the film and other related materials are used by students to create meaningful and unique scholarship. The '63 Boycott session will be Tuesday, March 23 from 1:00-2:00 pm (Central Time), following Steven D. Booth’s presentation.
In addition, Kartemquin Films and VRA are providing ’63 Boycott as a streamed film available to all registered conference attendees. The 30 minute film will be available to all registered conference attendees from Tuesday through Friday though the Attendee Portal, and there will be opportunities for group discussions on the film.