Price:

Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $49.95
K-12 & Public Libraries DVD | $49.95
Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $5.95

Film Summary:

If she had been a bigger fan of capitalism, Louise Thompson Patterson might have been a Horatio Alger heroine, lionized today as a pioneering woman of the Harlem Renaissance and a role model for both African Americans and women of all colors. Instead, she put the skills and education that she fought for and won in a racist society to work for the liberation of African Americans, the US working class, and the exploited and oppressed peoples throughout the world.

Louis Thompson Patterson: In Her Own Words is a short oral history portrait tracing the life and times of Louise Alone Thompson Patterson, a civil rights and labor activist and Harlem Renaissance cultural worker who was infamously dubbed "Madame Moscow" for her unapologetic role in America's Communist movement. Her work as an activist spanned many decades, ranging from her 1930 stint as a delegate to the World Conference Against Racism and Anti-Semitism in Paris, France and active battle to save the lives of the infamous Scottsboro Boys to her involvement in the defense of Angela Davis and other Black Panthers leaders arrested during the 1960s.

Filmmaker Bio:

Louis Massiah is the founder and executive director of the Scribe Video Center in Philadelphia, a media arts organization that provides low-cost workshops and equipment access to emerging video and filmmakers and community organizations. He is an independent filmmaker who has produced and directed a variety of award-winning documentary films for public television.

Known for his explorations of civil rights themes and crises in the African-American community, his credits include two films in the Eyes on the Prize II series and The Bombing of Osage Avenue, about the burning of a black section of Philadephia as a result of the police bombing of the headquarters of the group MOVE. He is also the director of W.E.B. DuBois: A Biography in Four Voices. Massiah has received awards from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the National Black Programming Consortium, the Pennsylvania Association of Broadcasters, the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame and several Emmy award nominations. In 1996, he was a recipient of a five year John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship. His current project, Haytian Stories, examines the complex relationship between the United States and Haiti over the last 200 years.