THE STORY OF A UNIQUE EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTION UNFOLDS IN THE NEW DOCUMENTARY
“A Place Out Of Time – The Bordentown School”
Narrated by Ruby Dee, the film airs nationally May 24th at 10 P.M. on PBS
Nicknamed the “Tuskegee of the North,” for 70 years the Bordentown school was an educational utopia, where generations of black children received academic and trade training, and - most importantly - they learned values, discipline, and life skills. After the Brown V. Board of Education Supreme Court decision Bordentown “went from being perceived as an educational utopia to a Jim Crow school,” by the black press and many Black leaders.
Colonel Allensworth and his colleagues tried to build a “Tuskegee of the West” at Allensworth, California. In 1914 there was a bill to establish a state-funded and federally aided land-grant school at Allensworth. However, black leaders in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Oakland were concerned that a voluntary segregated school would be a step backward in California’s battle to integrate the schools and the bill was defeated.
“
A Place Out of Time – The Bordentown School” a documentary film narrated by legendary actress Ruby Dee tells the story of this remarkable institution through the life stories and memories of alumni, scholars and historians, and archival footage and photographs.
From 1886 to 1955, the Bordentown School was the only state-run, all-black, co-educational boarding school north of the Mason-Dixon Line. The school attracted visitors such as Eleanor Roosevelt, Paul Robeson, Jesse Owens, Albert Einstein, Mary McCloud Bethune, and Booker T. Washington. S. A. Haley, father of author Alex Haley; William Hastie, the first black U.S. Appeals Court judge; and Lester Granger, former leader of the Urban League were members of the faculty and staff. Notable Bordentown alumni include celebrated jazz organist Rhoda Scott, and George Grant dentist, Harvard professor, and inventor of the golf tee.
You can purchase a DVD of “A Place Out of Time” from the
Hudson West Productions website. Hudson West Productions is a not-for-profit, 502(c)3 production company whose documentaries have been seen on television in the UK, Norway, and Australia, and have screened at film festivals in New York, Chicago, Paris, Dublin, Montreal, Amsterdam, St. Petersburg, Sydney, and Upsala.
Stephen Hill, Sr.
