Documentary History Project for Youth Price:

Higher Education Institutions & Government Agency DVD | $139.00
K-12 & Public Libraries DVD | $79.00
Home Video DVD License – Restrictions Apply | $20.00

Scribe Video Center Program:

The Documentary History Project for Youth (DHPY) is an annual after-school, weekend and summertime digital media production workshop for middle and high school students. Each year, youth participants create short documentary films as a way to explore some aspect of the social, political and cultural history of Philadelphia. 

DHPY Students: The following student videomakers, then ages 13 through 19, researched, wrote, shot and edited this documentary: Stephen Blythe (Freire Charter School), Stacey Luehrs (The Shipley School), Esther Pacheco (Edison High School), Felix Penzarella ( Delaware Valley Friends School), Robert Poles (Camden County Vocational Technical High School), Benjamin Talbert (Edison High School), Zarif Wilder (CHAD Charter School), with assistance from Jordan Astrove (Samuel Fels High School), Andre Jones (Edison High School), Michael Jones (Kensington High School), and Eugene Spencer (Parkway School).

Instructors: Sarah Poindexter, Deborah Rudman and Pablo Colapinto

Film Summary:

This documentary exploring the African American struggle for voting rights in 19th-century Philadelphia was produced by student videomakers enrolled in Scribe's 2004 Documentary History Project for Youth. The life of Octavius Valentine Catto - 19th-century educator, organizer, Civil War soldier, voting rights advocate and baseball star - is seen through the eyes of a group of contemporary teenagers. Catto -- a black icon who founded the Banneker Literary Institute, helped desegregate the railroads, and who participated in the creation of the 14th and 15th Amendments -- was assassinated at age the young age of 32 in Philadelphia's Election Day race riots of 1871. He left behind a legacy that helped pave the way for the Civil Rights movement that arose almost a century later.