Shukree Tilghman Interviewing William Jones, CEO of Focus:HOPE. |
Episode 1 | Jobs
Fifty years after the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, has America delivered on the marchers’ demands for more access to employment?
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In this first episode of the documentary web series “The March @50,” filmmaker Shukree Hassan Tilghman explores this question with a critical eye. The rate of African American unemployment remains the same fifty years after the Marchers asked for a government program to address the problem. Algernon Austin, who directs the Economic Policy Institute's Program on Race, Ethnicity and the Economy helps Shukree explore the statistics and causes behind this astounding fact.
This leads Shukree to Detroit where he looks at the jobs programs of Focus: HOPE, a non-profit civil and human rights organization that provides job training and placement assistance. Speaking with people who want to work in a city in bankruptcy and looking at the human faces behind the stunning statistics.
>> Each short film in the series takes on one of the themes that brought thousands to the mall in 1963 through a contemporary lens. These short documentaries look at how far we still have to go to address the major issues of the March all these decades later.
>> In the next episode, we explore Voting Rights through the lens of the recent Supreme Court Decision that hobbles section 5 of the Act.
Ready to Discuss?
Chat with filmmaker Shukree Tilghman as he dissects the first episode of his web series.
Check out Episode 2
Have we delivered on the promise to provide all Americans with equal access to the Vote?
Explore more resources from Episode 1:
| Economic Policy Institiute's "Unfinished March" project
| Video: Economic Goals and the Civil Rights Movement, C-SPAN
