Film Premiere – Coloring Our Past

Coloring Our Past
On May 26 at 7 pm, Noble Horizons will premiere Coloring Our Past, a film made by Salisbury School students in the Searching for Slavery class. The film chronicles their discovery of the lost stories of local black and indigenous peoples whose contributions have been hidden from history for the last 200+ years. Throughout the year, the students have conducted extensive research, fieldwork, interviews and other efforts to uncover the lives of people who have long been buried, forgotten, or ignored.

Community programs showcasing the students’ discoveries have been held in recent months and on May 1, James Mars Day was celebrated with an official decree issued by Governor Lamont. A memorial ceremony was held on May 1 in Norfolk, where the enslaved Mars began and ended his life. The Witness Stones Project, which seeks to acknowledge and confront a past that did not live up to the nation’s founding ideals of justice and equality, installed a stone marker to forever honor Mars.

Coloring Our Past details the ongoing and exhaustive efforts undertaken to reveal the extensive contributions of people like the James Mars and members of the Cesar family, who fought in wars, owned land, worked, paid taxes, had businesses, and contributed to our communities but were never accounted for in local histories. The film includes commentary from descendants of the Cesar family

Registration and a Zoom link for the premiere of the documentary are below.