COMING to PBS MONDAY, MAY 24th, at 10 PM
Check for local dates and times

For a seventy-year period, when America cared little about the education of African–Americans, and discrimination was law and custom, The Bordentown School was an educational utopia. An incubator for black pride and intellect, it taught values, discipline, and life skills to generations of black children. This is the story of that remarkable school, as told by Bordentown alumni, historians, and remarkable archival footage. It is also the story of black education in America across three centuries, presenting a nuanced, rarely seen portrait of a separate black space; and a much-needed preface to the growing national discussion about historically black institutions and their role in nurturing identity and accomplishment.  What was lost and what was gained in the march toward equality?

A film by Dave Davidson
Produced by Dave Davidson and Amber Edwards
Narrated by Ruby Dee
Copyright 2009 Hudson West Productions
Funded by The Prudential Foundation, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The New Jersey Historical Commission, and the New Jersey Council for the Humanities
Press Contact: Havelock Nelson, Goodman Media (212) 576-2700 x 235
hnelson@goodmanmedia.com

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Media Contacts:
Havelock Nelson
(212)  576 - 2700 x 235
hnelson@goodmanmedia.com 

Jenny Brod
(212) 576-2700 x 259
jbrod@goodmanmedia.com          
             

THE STORY OF A UNIQUE BLACK EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION
UNFOLDS IN THE NEW DOCUMENTARY
“A PLACE OUT OF TIME—THE BORDENTOWN SCHOOL”

Narrated by Ruby Dee, film airs nationally May 24th at 10 P.M. on PBS

March 8, 2010—For a 70-year period from 1866-1955, when America cared little about education for African Americans, and discrimination was both law and custom, The Bordentown School in Bordentown, New Jersey, was an educational utopia.  An incubator for Black pride and intellect, it taught values, discipline, and life skills to generations of Black children.  A Place Out of Time—The Bordentown School is a documentary film—narrated by legendary actress Ruby Dee and airing nationally on PBS May 24th at 10 PM—that tells the story of this remarkable institution through its alumni, scholars and historians, and a treasure trove of archival footage and photographs.

Directed by award-winning filmmaker Dave Davidson and co-produced by Amber Edwards, “A Place Out of Time” chronicles the birth, growth, and decline of the last all-Black, publicly funded, co-educational boarding school north of the Mason-Dixon line.  The film is also a chronicle of Black education in America across three centuries, a rarely seen inside portrait of a separate Black space, and an historical preface to the growing national discussion about historically Black institutions and their roles in nurturing both identity and personal accomplishment.

In its prime, Bordentown was called “The Tuskegee of the North,” after Booker T. Washington’s famous Alabama educational institute.  Students at Bordentown trained in a variety of marketable trades, from agriculture to domestic science, and were schooled in both academic and social skills.   With a 400-acre Georgian-style campus, Bordentown could easily be mistaken for an elite private school. Yet it was operated by the State of New Jersey, which closed it in 1955, after the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. 

“It is astounding how, in a few short years, the image of Bordentown changed in the public consciousness,” Davidson says.  “In a very turbulent decade, it went from being perceived as an educational utopia to a Jim Crow school.”

“A Place Out of Time” examines the ramifications of the school’s closure (it is used now as a juvenile detention facility, an ironic fact revealed in the final frames of the documentary) and considers the value of an education that includes manual training and physical labor, practiced on a daily basis in the service of one’s community.   The story is as timely today as ever, with public education in the U.S.—especially for many African-Americans—under increasing scrutiny and pressure to change.  Bordentown was an educational experiment that succeeded in the face of institutionalized racism, limited resources, and political interference.  Are there lessons for education today that can be learned from the Bordentown model?

FILM CREDITS
Producer/Director: Dave Davidson; Co-Producer: Amber Edwards
A production of Hudson West Productions, copyright 2009
Format: Standard Definition CC STEREO, widescreen.
Running time: 56 minutes

Funders: The Prudential Foundation, The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The New Jersey Council on the Humanities, and The New Jersey Historical Commission.

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MEDIA NOTES

• DVD review screener is available upon request. 
• Director Davidson, Co-Producer Edwards, and several of the persons featured in the film are available for interviews about “A Place Out of Time” and the Bordentown School.
• High-resolution still images from the film, and additional information available online at www.bordentownschool.tv

ADDITIONAL FILM BACKGROUND
“A Place Out of Time” (2009) examines the social, political, and historical forces that forged the school’s creation and ascent:  the violent backlash against post-Civil War Reconstruction reforms; the Great Migration; the myth and reality of “separate but equal;” the opposing educational philosophies of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois; the Harlem Renaissance; and the birth of the Civil Rights movement.   It explores the causes of Bordentown’s eventual demise, triggered by the same advocates for equality and social justice who had supported it a few years before. 

The film combines multiple narrative strands.  On one level it maps the history of black education in America and the struggle for equal opportunity in the classroom and beyond.  This “big picture” is painted by two of the country’s leading scholars—David Levering Lewis, Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer of W.E.B. DuBois, and Clement Price, a highly honored professor at Rutgers University and an expert in New Jersey’s Black history. 

On another level, the film is deeply personal, as the life stories and memories of Bordentown alumni weave throughout the narrative.  Viewers meet the alumni individually, and as they prepare together for a bittersweet school reunion on the campus 50 years after the final class graduated.  The students at Bordentown came from wildly diverse backgrounds and circumstances, but were all equals in the school’s safe space.  Standards were high, discipline was strict, and the human bonds were deep and nurturing.  As one alumna says “They cuddled us. And they kicked us in the butt when it was necessary.”

Bordentown was a unique institution, but it was also an archetype of many historically Black organizations in the 19th and 20th centuries.  Its closure in 1955 was, on the surface at least, triggered by Brown v. Board of Education; as a public school it could not continue to exist legally as a segregated institution.  Attempts by the state to integrate the school—widely considered half-hearted and insincere—failed.  And while the decision to shut it down was mourned by Bordentown’s students and faculty it was cheered by the Black press and many Black leaders who had been agitating against the school as a shameful vestige of Jim Crow.

“A Place Out of Time” is historical, not polemical. Yet its story is as timely today as ever.  Are there lessons for education today that can be learned from the Bordentown model?

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“A Place Out of Time—The Bordentown School” features hundreds of unique photographs from the school's history, many by Lewis Hine, the iconic “social issue” photographer of the early 20th Century.

"Bugle Boy"—Lewis Hine

"Croquet"—Lewis Hine

"Teacher & Students"—State of NJ

"Manicure"—Lewis Hine

"In Auditorium"—State of NJ

 

DAVE DAVIDSON Director/Co-Producer

Independent filmmaker and media educator Dave Davidson founded Hudson West Productions in 1985 and currently serves as President.  Over the past 28 years, Davidson has directed on numerous award-winning documentaries and has received The American Film Institute Independent Filmmaker Grant, the National Endowment for the Arts Mid-Atlantic Artist Fellowship, and the Outstanding Artist Award from The New Jersey State Council on the Arts.  His documentaries, CISSY HOUSTON—SWEET INSPIRATION and THE DANCING MAN—PEG LEG BATES received their national broadcast premieres on PBS and he directed the multiple award-winning INTO THE LIGHT,  a co-production of Hudson West and NJN.  For Hudson West, Davidson is currently directing and co-producing HANS RICHTER: EVERYTHING TURNS—EVERYTHING REVOLVES , a documentary on the legendary Dadaist, filmmaker and political radical who, after escaping Nazi Germany, came to America to found the first film school and mentor generations of independent filmmakers. Davidson is Professor of Film at The City College of New York (City University of New York) in Harlem, where he is the Founding Director of the MFA in Media Arts Production program—the only program  of its kind in the largest media market in the world offered at an affordable / accessible public institution. In its first decade students from the program have achieved world-wide recognition including winning the Student Academy Award and 3 Student Emmys.

FILMOGRAPHY AS DIRECTOR CO-PRODUCER
A PLACE OUT OF TIME—THE BORDENTOWN SCHOOL
(2009—PBS National Broadcast May 2010).
Funded by grants from The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The New Jersey Historical Commission The New Jersey Humanities Council and The Prudential Foundation.

NO PLACE TO BE SMART—THE BRIGHTEST KIDS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS.  
(2000, American Public Television).
Funded by The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, CINE Golden Eagle

BRICK CITY LESSONS
(1999, American Public Television)
CINE Golden Eagle; Funded by The Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation

QUICKSAND & BANANAPEELS—A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF TWO PRINCIPALS
(1998, American Public Television)
CEN Programming Award for Public Affairs; Silver Apple, National Educational Media Network.

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Amber Edwards

Amber Edwards is co-producer of A Place Out of Time—The Bordentown School, her seventh national PBS documentary, and is Series Producer/Director of Hudson West’s upcoming PBS series Michael Feinstein’s American Songbook which will premiere in the fall of 2010.

Amber also produced, directed, wrote, and edited the award-winning Words and Music by Jerry Herman about the legendary Broadway composer/lyricist, which aired on PBS on January 1, 2008 (winner CINE Golden Eagle; Gold Remi, Houston WorldFest.) Previous PBS broadcasts include the 2001 documentary George Segal: American Still Life about the famous Pop Art sculptor (CINE Golden Eagle; Gold Remi, Houston WorldFest; "Chris" Award, Columbus International Film Festival; Silver Screen Award, US International Film and Video Festival; NETA Award for Documentary Biography;)  Quicksand and Banana Peels—A Year in the Life of Two Principals (1998, APT/PBS; CEN Programming Award—Public Affairs ;) Against The Odds: The Artists of the Harlem Renaissance (1994, PBS Black History Month Special; CINE, “Chris” Award ;) Vladimir Feltsman In Moscow (1993, PBS ;) and The Dancing Man—Peg Leg Bates, about the remarkable one-legged black tap dancer and resort owner (1992, PBS Black History Month Special; CINE Golden Eagle; Silver Plaque—Chicago Film Festival; Silver Apple-NEFVF; Director’s Choice—Black Maria Film Festival.)

Amber has been with Hudson West Productions since 1989, and for twenty-one years was Senior Producer and Host of NJN Public Television‘s long running weekly series State of the Arts, where she earned thirteen regional Emmy Awards and numerous other honors for her national PBS documentaries. 

Radio work includes producing features for WBGO (Newark, NJ), the public radio jazz station; and she is currently producing a multi-part radio series with Michael Feinstein for WFMT public radio (Chicago) titled “Forever and a Day—The Gershwin Legacy.”

Ms. Edwards grew up in Kansas City and graduated from Yale University, where she is a Fellow at Branford College.  She lives in Connecticut with her husband, the novelist Justin Scott.

 

DIRECTOR’S STATEMENT

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History tends to gather itself around  cathartic moments  and larger-than-life personalities that changed the world. African American history is no exception. Often overlooked, uncredited, and sometimes even stigmatized are the people and institutions that continued to move the cause forward between major clicks on the dial of history.

In an era of state sanctioned racism, The Bordentown school was a haven for black intellectual activity, cultural identity and ethnic pride.  It was a black space—created by black people for black people.  From 1886 to 1955, it turned out proud, high-achieving graduates ready to navigate through an often hostile white world

Rather than take its place with other historically black schools, The Bordentown school was closed after the Brown v. Board of Education decision—labeled as a vestige of the Jim Crow era. A number of Bordentown graduates are still alive, although their  numbers dwindle each year. To a filmmaker, the existence of these living graduates presented an irresistible opportunity to revisit this misunderstood institution and allow them to tell the story of a place out of time that changed their world and helped to position hundreds of African Americans to be ready for the Civil Rights Movement.

 

FACT SHEET ABOUT BORDENTOWN

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GENERAL HISTORY
From 1886 to 1955, The Bordentown School was only state-run, all-Black, co-educational boarding school north of the Mason-Dixon Line.  Students lived and worked on campus in a learning community with faculty and staff.

FOUNDER
The school’s founder Reverend Walter Rice was born a slave in South Carolina. Late in the Civil War he became what was known as a contraband—one of a group of unofficial workers and fighters that followed Union Army outfits, such as the Massachusetts 54th (the group depicted in the film Glory). Rice befriended a young officer who brought him to New England after the war.

PHILOSOPHY
The school successfully blended the opposing philosophies of two major figures in Black education, Booker T. Washington (who championed training in the manual trades) and W.E.B Dubois (whose philosophy emphasized classical education for the “talented tenth”).

NICKNAMES
Bordentown was known by two nicknames:

• “Old Ironsides”—The land donated to build the school's 100-acre campus came from the Estate of Admiral Charles Stewart, commander of the USS Constitution (Old Ironsides) during the War of 1812; and
• “The Tuskegee of the North”—Because it featured Booker T. Washington's "trades forward" approach to education, Bordentown gained this nickname after Washington's legendary Alabama institution.

FAMOUS VISITORS
Bordentown became a destination for key Black leaders and progressive white citizens to observe the school in action.  Some of the more famous visitors include:

• Eleanor Roosevelt
• Paul Robeson
• Jesse Owens
• Albert Einstein
• Mary McCloud Bethune
• Booker T. Washington
• Albert Barnes (Barnes, the eccentric art collector and educator, was a great fan of African Art and culture. He brought artist friends like Henri Matisse to the campus to hear the choir in an attempt to expose them to what Barnes deemed “authentic” culture.)

           
GRADUATES
Notable Bordentown alumni include:

• George Haley—Ambassador to Gambia (and brother of “Roots” author, Alex Haley)
• Rhoda Scott—celebrated jazz organist (now living in France)
• Maida Springer—labor organizer, pan-Africanist and social justice worker
• George Grant—dentist, Harvard professor, and inventor of the golf tee

FACULTY AND STAFF
Notable Bordentown employees include:

• S.A. Haley—father of author Alex Haley and Ambassador George Haley
• William Hastie—the first Black U.S. Appeals Court Judge
• Lester Granger—former leader of The Urban League
• Frederick Work—co-author of "Folk Songs of the American Negro" with his brother John, who directed the Fisk Jubilee Singers and made the first field recording of blues singers, including Muddy Waters.

AGRICULTURAL EXCELLENCE
The school grew most of its own food and livestock.  Its produce routinely swept the awards at state agricultural competitions.

SPORTS
The first national championships of the all-Black American Tennis Association (ATA) were played on the Bordentown grounds in 1924.  Althea Gibson won the tournament there in 1955 before winning Wimbledon. 

The school’s Ironsides football team was not allowed to play against other local high schools because the team included semi-pro “ringers” who had already graduated from high school but had returned for job training. Instead they toured, playing colleges and military bases along the Eastern Seaboard.

CLOSING
The school was a victim of the Supreme Court’s 1955 Brown v. Board of Education decision ruling that segregated education was unconstitutional.  After half-hearted attempts to enroll white students at Bordentown, the State of New Jersey claimed the institution could not be integrated and it was closed.  The campus now serves as a youth incarceration facility.

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For more information about A Place Out of Time—The Bordentown School contact Havelock Nelson hnelson@goodmanmedia.com or Jenny Brod jbrod@goodmanmedia.com, both at 212-576-2700.