Documentary, September 19th: Family Name

Tuesday Night

Family Name (Macky Alston; 1997; 89 min.)

Tuesday, September 19, 7:00 p.m.
Gaines Center’s Bingham-Davis House, 218 E. Maxwell Street

As a child growing up in Durham, North Carolina, Macky Alston never questioned why all the other Alstons in his elementary school were black. But in his early 30’s Alston went back to unravel the mystery. “Above all, Family Name is a genealogical detective story [that] reminds viewers that the era of slavery and its horrors wasn’t that long ago. But it also suggests that forgiveness for those crimes is possible and that acknowledging the past, then moving on, is a far healthier approach to painful historical truths than slamming the book shut and pretending to forget.”—Stephen Holden, New York Times

Commentary and discussion led by Nikky Finney, poet and Professor of English, and Kathi Kern, Associate Professor of History.