Friday, February 6, 2009
Norwalk residents star in Douglass story

Norwalkers Jeffery Sumpter, Teresa Teed, Malik We, Makayla Goethe and (standing from left) Felicia Williams and Nicole Williams take a break from playing slaves on a Maryland plantation to pose together during filming of “Frederick Douglass: Pathway From Slavery to Freedom.” Warrups Farm in Redding was the location for the film’s plantation scenes.

Goethe plays the 6-year-old Douglass, hearing the death of his mother from his grandmother, played by Delores Fleminq The half-hour TV drama will have its world premiere on CPTV on Sunday. It is the real-life story of the young boy who escaped the horrors of slavery in Maryland in pre-Civil War America to become one of our country’s most successful black writers, lecturers and abolitionists.

Jamie Hector, best known for playing Marlo Stanfield on the HBO series "The Wire," and a leading player on NBC's "Heroes," stars as Frederick Douglass in an original half-hour historical drama shot entirely in Norwalk and other parts of Connecticut. Douglass was a slave who escaped to freedom and became one of, our nation's most influential abolitionists.

The show also stars Norwalk elementary school student Malik Goethe as six-year-old Frederick and Hamden middle school student Kendall Jones as the eight-year-old Frederick.

Other local featured actors are Norwalk's Teresa Teed; Farmington resident Charly Alvarez; Milford resident Mary Ann Wasil Nilan; Westport residents Marion Mason, Ryder Chasen and Colleen Murphy; and Danbury's John Halas. Most of the extras and production crew are also Connecticut residents.

"Frederick Douglass: Pathway From Slavery to Freedom," will have its world premiere broadcast on CPTV Sunday at 6:30 p.m. A re-broadcast airs Monday, at 10:30 p.m. The first in a new series called Young American Heroes, it tells the story of the young Frederick Douglass and his escape from the horrors of slavery at the age of 20.

The state of Connecticut is another star of the show.

Filming was completed in May 2008 at a number of Connecticut locations, including the streets of South Norwalk (transformed into New York City circa 1830), Roton Middle School in Norwalk, as well as on the soundstage at Palace Digital Studios in South Norwalk. All of the locations stand in for the Maryland plantation on which Douglass was born in the early 1800s, the home in Baltimore where he worked as a house slave as a young boy and the train he boarded to make his escape north.

The show was edited by Palace Digital Studios at its South Norwalk television/film studio, and was directed by South Norwalk's Chris Campbell.

Campbell is managing partner for Young American Heroes and owner/creative director of Palace Production Center in South Norwalk.

Executive Producers are Campbell and Tim Smith, a resident of Rowayton, who also wrote the Frederick Douglass film script.

Both the TV program and an accompanying Web site (www.youngamericanheroes.com)are based on Frederick Douglass's autobiography, "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave Written by Himself," and use Douglass's own words to tell his story.

The TV show and Web site are just two elements of a larger Young American Heroes multi-platform content project, which is the brainchild of Campbell and Smith and is being partially funded by tha Corporation for Public Broadcasting. After the film on Douglass, the producers plan four more programs on-other "young heroes:' and eventually up to 52 programs for the series.

South Norwalk resident and Roton Middle School eighth grader Matthew Campbell plays one of the Baltimore street boys who taught reading to the young Frederick Douglass, played by Kendall Jones.

Wallace King, owner of Kings Barber Shop In Norwalk, plays a freeman aboard the train on which Frederick Douglass escapes North to freedom.

In addition to the half-hour television shows, Young American Heroes is producing a classroom DVD, retail DVD and a graphic novel based on each of the TV shows; a student 2.0 Web site with games and links to historical archives, and a teacher Web site.

Palace Production Center and Docere Palace Studios, both award-winning Connecticut media companies, have teamed with leading Web developer eduweb.com, Connecticut Public Television, Fairfield University Graduate School of Education and an advisory board of leading historians from Yale, Princeton and other universities and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to create this breakthrough multi-platform educational project.

Young American Heroes is one of only seven projects to win a prestigious grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's American History & Civics Initiative 'specifically to develop break-through ways of teaching history and civics to middle school students.

This CPB initiative drew more than 80 entries from leading public television stations and production companies. Young American Heroes's formula is to tell compelling stories by taking an innovative peer approach - using primary documents and diaries about ordinary kids - real kids - doing extraordinary things during seminal moments in American history.

It is one of many productions taking advantage of the Connecticut Tax Credits, which are attracting film projects to the state.

In addition to producing the TV show and Web site, Docere Palace has created a five day Frederick Douglass classroom curriculum designed around key choice points in his young life and using critical scenes from the TV show in a digital storytelling activity that requires students to review primary documents online at the Young American Heroes Web site.

The curriculum was field tested last June in social studies classes at three Connecticut middle schools: Tomlinson Middle School in Fairfield, West Side Middle School in Waterbury and Scofield Magnet Middle School in Stamford.

As a lead up to filming the TV show, a Young American Heroes Web site invited middle school teachers and their students to give their creative input and suggestions on the television script, locations, casting and help in designing the activities and content of the 2.0 student Web site as it was being built. For information about Young American Heroes, including curriculum samples, visit www.cptv.org Keyword Search: Young American Heroes.

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