"Living Legacy" Documentary on the Historic Russell School

Maddie Stambler is a second-year graduate student at Duke in the MFA in Experimental and Documentary Arts program. She reached out to the Friends of Russell Rosenwald School with an interest in creating a short documentary film for her thesis project about the story of the Historic Russell School.

Maddie is a young Jewish woman with roots in the South. She is fascinated by historical relationships and partnerships between African Americans and Jews and captivated by the story of Julius Rosenwald and Booker T. Washington.

Growing up, my childhood best friend, Darrien Fann, was an African American preacher with cerebral palsy. As a kid, I would attend Darrien's church in Cleveland, Ohio on Sundays to watch him preach and Darrien would attend performing arts camp with me in the summers at the Jewish Community Center. Darrien and I became immersed in each other's backgrounds and cultures and our friendship has had a lasting impact on our interests and intellectual pursuits. During the pandemic, I released a short film about Darrien and his journey to fulfill his calling as a preacher.

When I learned about the Russell School, I was impressed to learn about the ways that your community has worked to preserve and maintain the school and use the space for educational purposes. The history of the Rosenwald Schools and their impact is critical to understanding the transformative power that access to education can have on young minds, particularly in the South. Through this film, I want to help preserve a piece of this history and help make it more widely known.

Host or Publisher Historic Russell School