Institute for Urban Research launches Race Scholars at Rice
Free screening of award-winning film “When I Rise”

BY JESSICA STARK
Rice News staff

With a special screening of the award-winning documentary film “When I Rise” at 4 p.m. Oct. 28 in Herring Hall, Room 100, Rice’s Institute for Urban Research will launch its Race Scholars at Rice (RSR) program. A panel discussion on race relations and the film’s significance will follow and will include Rice faculty members and the film’s director, Mat Hames, and executive producer, Don Carleton. The event is free and open to the public.

“When I Rise” is a feature-length documentary about Barbara Smith Conrad, a gifted black University of Texas music student during the late 1950s who found herself at the epicenter of racial controversy. When she was cast as the leading lady opposite a white man in the university’s production of the opera “Dido and Aeneas,” the Texas Legislature stepped in and had her removed from the cast. The incident garnered national media attention and prompted unexpected support from Sidney Poitier, Eleanor Roosevelt and Harry Belafonte. It wasn’t until 2009 that the Texas State Legislature officially apologized to Conrad for its actions.

“This film really exemplifies the issues of inequality, which Race Scholars at Rice wants to explore in a series of initiatives in the coming academic year,” said Jenifer Bratter, associate professor of sociology and director of RSR. “RSR seeks to enhance interdisciplinary research collaborations on race issues and promote the visibility of scholarly work on race. ‘When I Rise’ really achieves this by bringing together historians, musicians and sociologists.”

Rice historian Melissa Kean and opera singer Susanne Mentzer of the Shepherd School of Music will join Bratter on the panel discussion.

“When I Rise” was produced by the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History based at the University of Texas in Austin. Through the center, Carleton raised an estimated $500,000 to finance the film. The film was an official selection of the 2010 South by Southwest Film Festival (Austin), the 2010 Dallas International Film Festival, the 2010 Hot Docs festival (Toronto), the 2010 Indianapolis Film Fest and the 2010 New York City International Film Festival and the recipient of the Audience Choice Award for feature film and the Black Expression Award from the 2010 Indianapolis Film Festival.

“The story about Barbara Smith Conrad had to be told in a video documentary,” Carleton said. “We started this film as a historical project to document history and to teach about history, but the film itself made history.”

RSR is dedicated to advancing the intellectual community of scholars and students whose work examines the relevance of race in all its dimensions. For more information about the event, contact the Institute for Urban Research iur@rice.edu or 713-348-4132.