Civil Rights Film Series to Continue With Red Tails

A film and discussion series on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement will continue on Tuesday with a showing of "Red Tails."

A three-part film and discussion series on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement will continue on Tuesday, Feb. 5, with a showing of Red Tails, a film about the Tuskegee Airmen.

Following the film screening,  there will be a discussion led by Roy Collins, the University’s associate general counsel. 

Tuesday's program, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 7 p.m. in Konover Campus Center. Light refreshments will be provided.

Red Tails stars Cuba Gooding Jr. and Terrence Howard as Tuskegee Airmen, an elite group of African American fighter pilots who helped reclaim the skies over Europe during World War II. The Tuskegee Airmen were the first African American military aviators in the United States armed forces.

Among those who plan to attend Tuesday's program is Ann Lankford, a University staff member whose father, Joshua Jay Lankford Jr., was a Tuskegee Airman. Ann Lankford is liaison manager and director of student services in the Department of Architecture, CETA.

Lankford's father died in 1993, but her brother, Morgan Jay Lankford, is continuing the family's aviation legacy – he served as a pilot in the U.S. Air Force, and currently works as an international commercial pilot for U.S. Airways.

Ann Lankford said that she didn't truly appreciate the significance of her father's role as a Tuskegee Airman until after he had passed away. "My message to young people is to make sure you talk to your parents and grandparents about their history before it is too late," Lankford said. She has seen the movies Red Tails and The Tuskegee Airmen multiple times, and she has learned about her father's experiences through letters and conversations with her older brother.

Film Series to Conclude on Feb. 12

The Red Tails program is the second event in the three-part film and discussion series on the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement. The series began last week with a screening of a portion of the award-winning documentary, Eyes on the Prize, and a discussion led by Professor of History Warren Goldstein.

The series will conclude on Tuesday, Feb. 12, with a showing of the documentary film Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin, and a discussion led by Bilal Sekou, associate professor of political science in Hillyer College. The film chronicles Bayard Rustin's complex, 60-year career as an activist. Rustin is best known for his work organizing the historic 1963 March on Washington, the biggest protest America had ever witnessed.

The film and discussion series was organized by the University's Martin Luther King Day Planning Committee, in order to extend its annual Martin Luther King Day celebration into Black History Month.