The Prep School Negro - Film Screening and Outreach Workshop

Thursday, March 1, 2012

6:00 pm

UNE's Ludcke Auditorium, 719 Stevens Avenue, Portland

Free and Open to the Public

Click here to see the film trailer.

Friends School of Portland, in collaboration with UNE, City of Portland, NAACP and area independent schools, is hosting director André Robert Lee and showing the film The Prep School Negro, on Thursday, March 1 at 6:00 pm at UNE's Ludcke Auditorium. Lee's film provides an important reflection on the challenges and opportunities that arise when a poor student of color leaves his community to attend an elite private school. Lee prompts us to consider the meanings that home and school, class and race, aspirations and education play in our current lives and the lives of our children. What does it mean to belong in a school community and what can schools do to become more truly inclusive? We hope you'll come to this unique event and engage in this important conversation!

Film Synopsis:

"André Robert Lee and his sister grew up in the ghettos of Philadelphia. Their mother struggled to support them by putting strings in the waistbands of track pants and swimsuits in a local factory. When Andre was 14 years old, he received what his family believed to be a golden ticket – a full scholarship to attend one of the most prestigious prep schools in the country. Elite education was Andre’s way up and out, but at what price? Yes, the exorbitant tuition was covered, but this new world cost him and his family much more than anyone could have anticipated.

In The Prep School Negro, André takes a journey back in time to revisit the events of his adolescence while also spending time with current day prep school students of color and their classmates to see how much has really changed inside the ivory tower. What he discovers along the way is the poignant and unapologetic truth about who really pays the consequences for yesterday’s accelerated desegregation and today’s racial naiveté."

We'd like to thank our cosponsors:

Cheverus High School
City of Portland

LearningWorks

Catherine McAuley High Dchool

Merriconeag Waldorf High School
NAACP Portland Branch
North Yarmouth Academy
UNE Multicultural Affairs
Waynflete School