NEW HAVEN REGISTER

Ready for his close-up: Young actor helps bring black history to life

Sunday, October 12, 2008 5:52 AM EDT
By Alexandra Seltzer, Special to the Register

HAMDEN — Hamden Middle School student Kendall Jones wants to be an architect, but for now he is doing just fine as an actor.

He plays young Frederick Douglass in the upcoming film, "Frederick Douglass: Pathway From Slavery to Freedom," which will be shown on Connecticut Public Television.

"It was really cool to play him because we learn about him in school," Kendall said. "You learn more while you're playing him because you get to really see what happened."

Docere Palace Studios of Norwalk is teaming with Palace Production Center of Norwalk, Fairfield University's Graduate School of Education, CPTV, and a team of historians from places like Yale University and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History to create a multi-platform project to help teach history and civics to middle school students.

The project is called Young American Heroes and is one of only a handful funded last year by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in a national competition that drew 80 entries. The project received $593,000 from the corporation.

Young American Heroes is meant to create a social studies curriculum as well as lesson plans that will be available nationwide. Students will be taught how the actions of one individual can affect the course of history.

The film is based on Frederick Douglass' autobiography "Narrative the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave." It was directed by Chris Campbell and edited at Palace Digital Studios in Norwalk.

Douglass, who died at age 77 in 1895, was a pioneering abolitionist, writer and civil rights leader. At the 1888 Republican National Convention, Douglass became the first black to receive a vote for President of the United States in a major party's roll call vote.

The Frederick Douglass installment is the first of five films in the series and if all goes well, the series will continue.

The program will be shown on CPTV in February as part of its Black History Month programming.

The film has also been offered to PBS. According to Deborah Weingrad, editorial director/project manager of Palace Production Center, "PBS has seen a copy and is very excited about it but we don't have a definite date."

According to Young American Heroes, the writers use "primary documents and diaries," which help to show "how the ordinary kids of the past have done extraordinary things during seminal moments in American history."

Kendall, 13, heard of the tryout for Young American Heroes in Norwalk from his agent. YAH was not Kendall's first tryout. He has modeled in magazines, including for Ethan Allen, Rosie and Reader's Digest. He has acted in three plays.

Kendall was first going out for the part of "JJ," a teenager, but he was told he did not look old enough. He was then asked to try out for the part of the young Frederick Douglass.

Kendall said, "I was real excited when I heard I got the part." Filming began in the spring. He filmed for six days in Bridgeport and Mystic.

While filming, Kendall found that some parts were more difficult than others. He said, "I was on a schooner and it was a rainy day so all the water from the rain kept splashing me in my face."

Kendall's father, Ricky Jones, and Kendall's aunt were in charge of bringing him to filming. Jones says, "It was a challenge but it was really good because the school worked with him in not giving him too much work to do."

"It was fun being able to watch him act and do different shoots."

According to the Young American Heroes, the project, "seeks to set up a new paradigm for education breaking down the walls going directly to teachers to get their input and finding students where they live 24/7 on their iPods and cell phones speaking to them in peer based language."

Weingrad said field tests of classroom curriculum were done in June in Fairfield, Waterbury and Stamford.

In these field tests, students and middle school teachers help to design the materials that schools will be using to teach American history.

Part of the way that YAH connects to the students in classrooms is through a classroom DVD that was created based on the film. Lesson plans, a retail DVD, the YAH Web site (www.youngamericanheroes.com) and graphic novel are all included in the studies.

"The response has been really positive," Weingrad said. "Both teachers and students seem to really be excited about the ability to create stories, use primary documents and use the interactivity of the Web to share stories. It's kind of like the way it works on YouTube but on a safe password-protected workspace."

Kendall said he has been asked to go to different classes in school and talk about the program and Frederick Douglass."

Kendall added, "One girl on my bus said everyone wants to know when it comes out."

Although he is on the acting track, Kendall said, "I always like drawing and my favorite subject is math and they go together so it would be cool to be an architect."

The first preview of the Frederick Douglass film will be Oct. 22 at 7 p.m. at the Avon Theatre Film Center in Stamford. For ticket information and directions, go to: www.avontheatre.org. Students will be admitted free of charge.

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