greene grants
2003 Greene Grant awarded to:
Ansley Erickson
Searching for Schools Where We All Belong…
In September 2003, The Maxine Greene Foundation, Inc. awarded a Greene Grant to New York City public school teacher, Ansley Erickson, for the documentary film, "Crossing Town – Brown’s Legacy in Nashville" about the effects of racial de-segregation.
- After more than a decade of gradual, token integration in Nashville, federal courts ordered busing across the metropolitan area to achieve desegregation. Met with hope by some, and resistance by others, busing transformed the experience of schooling in Nashville, bringing students from a wide variety of backgrounds together in its schools, hallways, gyms and classrooms.
- Busing and desegregation changes lives over generations, and this film focuses on the Dixon family. The stories of Brittany Dixon, a recent graduate of a racially diverse Nashville high school is juxtaposed with her uncle’s, who had been bused to seven schools in neighborhoods across Nashville, and her grandfather’s, who had attended all-black segregated schools.
- Ansley’s film features stories of the parents, teachers, students, prominent Nashvillians, academic and religious leaders who lived through the early years of busing. Their stories aren't as much about what happened in classrooms as they are about human struggles for justice and belonging.
"I hope that this film will create conversation about what was accomplished and what is left yet undone toward making schooling equitable for all children, black or white, rich or poor."
-Ansley Erickson
"We accept (although with some difficulty) the notion of 'failing schools' and the going definitions of them. And inequality, resegregation. We blandly acknowledge demographic factors and the differences between urban and suburban schools… the injustices, the indifference to inequality, refer back anxiously to prior reforms seemingly forever set aside."