‘Living Single’ star directed film, ‘The Big Payback’
Ben and Jerry’s to serve up special flavor of ice cream for event
SALISBURY – Erika Alexander, who played attorney Maxine Shaw on the hit TV show, “Living Single,” will be on the campus of Livingstone College on March 20 to debate national reparations.
Alexander co-directed her first film, “The Big Payback,” a documentary that follows Alderman Robin Rue Simmons and her pursuit to pass the first government-funded reparations program in Evanston, Ill. Meanwhile, U.S. Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee faces a 30-year uphill battle to pass HR40, a national bill to study reparations and make recommendations. Both women are met with racism and historical resistance, as well as assistance from allies and abolitionists within.
Alexander and Whitney Dow, co-founders of Color Farm Media, are the team behind the documentary and are partnering with historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) to hold a series of National Reparations Debates, inspired by the 1965 James Baldwin-William Buckley debate.
The first phase of the initiative incorporates 10 HBCUs in North Carolina with Livingstone College being the second occurrence. The program will be held from 6-8 p.m. in the Tubman Little Theater, located on the campus at 701 W. Monroe St., Salisbury.
“Students will use spoken word and rap battles to debate for and/or against reparations,” said Nailah McDowell, LC Connect Coordinator and sociology instructor at Livingstone College.
In preparation for the Monday program, the documentary will be shown twice this week on campus. The film debuted at the Tribeca Film Festival in front of a packed house at the Apollo Theater in Harlem on Juneteenth. It premiered nationwide on PBS on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day in January.
Color Farm Media is partnering with Ben & Jerry’s, who will be serving up a special flavor called “Reparations Now! Root Beer Floats,” in honor of “The Big Payback”
“Reparations is the making of amends for a wrong one has done by paying money to, [therefore] helping, those who have been wronged. Or compensation paid by a defeated state. That’s really what it is,” Alexander said in one interview. “In this sense, it’s reparations for the descendants of the enslaved Africans and their descendants by the U.S. government for harm, not only from slavery, but from Jim Crow policies, legislation, [and] all these things that have been interred in the American fabric.”
Said Dow, who is a white man, “It’s repairing the relationship between Black and White Americans. It also means repairing White people. As a white person, I believe you’re living in a state of cognitive dissonance where you are trying to manage this story that you’ve told about yourself, which has some holes in it. It’s really hard to keep holding that in play, so I think that part of the repair is also for the white community to repair.”
Clink link to watch trailer of “The Big Payback”: (86) The Big Payback (Official Trailer) - YouTube
About Livingstone College
Livingstone College is a private historically black college that is secured by a strong commitment to quality instruction, academic excellence and student success. Through a Christian-based environment suitable for holistic learning, Livingstone provides excellent business, liberal arts, STEAM, teacher education and workforce development programs for students from all ethnic backgrounds designed to promote lifelong learning, and to develop student potential for leadership and service to a global community. For more information, visit www.livingstone.edu.
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