Dr Marilyn Kurata

Advisory Board

At the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Dr. Kurata served as chair of the English department, university Director of Core Curriculum Enhancement, and Interim Associate Provost for Undergraduate Programs. Honors include selection as an Outstanding First Year Student Advocate by the National Center for the First Year Experience and Students in Transition, two Difficult Dialogue grants from the Ford Foundation, a Core Commitments grant from the AAC&U, and multiple grants supporting her scholarship in Victorian studies. Her commitment to strengthening town-gown partnerships and promoting diversity are additionally reflected in her 15 years of service on the Alabama Humanities Foundation Board of Directors and 10 years on UAB’s One Great Community council.

Dr Lynda Wilson

Advisory Board

Dr. Wilson had a 37-year career as a nursing faculty member, retiring in 2015 as Professor Emerita from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Wilson has a long-standing interest in social justice, global health and international nursing. She served as Fulbright Scholar and Specialist in Chile, Zambia, and Malawi, and following her retirement she established a Refugee Interest Group through the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham (UUCB). This group subsequently achieved 501C3 status as a non-profit charitable organization called the Alabama Interfaith Refugee Partnership. Dr. Wilson served on the Planning and Evaluation Committee for the Bending the Arc film project and assisted with preparing grant proposals for this project.

Dr Diane Tucker

Advisory Board

Dr. Diane Tucker is a Professor of Psychology and the Founding Director of the Science and Technology Honors Program in the Honors College at University of Alabama at Birmingham. Dr. Tucker grew up in Iowa and moved to Birmingham in 1985 to join the faculty at UAB; she joined the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham in 1995, drawn to the church’s legacy of living its values through the Civil Rights struggle and its continuing commitment to a liberal religious community. Diane is honored to be among the team that has facilitated production of Bending the Arc.

Antoine & Tanya Bell

Advisory Board

Antoine and Tanja Bell are both members of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. The couple has been members of the church since 2017, but Tanja has been affiliated for more than 10 years, during which she was heavily involved with the church’s Justice Committee. After serving on the UUCB Board of Trustees, Antoine was elected in 2020 to serve as Board President. He is the first African American president in the history of UUCB. Together, the Bells have served in the church as worship chairs and lay ministers. They also have led workshops on Diversity and Equity and Inclusion. Professionally, Antoine is a veteran communications professional, with a background in broadcast, print, and marketing; he worked in athletics administration for 30 years. He headed up the Athletic Communications Department at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, as well as serving as Athletic Director. On occasion, he continues to work at athletics events as a consultant. Currently, Antoine works in the College of Continuing Studies at the University of Alabama as the manager of Business Development and College Relations. Meanwhile, Tanja is a land acquisition and compliance professional, managing the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program at the Birmingham Airport Authority. Tanja has also worked as a community organizer for the Alabama Citizens for Constitution Reform. Antoine and Tanja are the owners of a consulting business and are developing a podcast entitled “The Couples Conversation” that will focus on relationship dynamics.

Antoine & Tanya Bell

Advisory Board

Dr Jeanne Weaver

Advisory Board

For almost three decades Dr. Weaver was a history instructor at Jefferson State Community College. She says that teaching the Western Civilization sequence, together with her Ph.D. studies, broadened her understanding of the peoples, events, and movements that have shaped the modern world. She continues to draw on that knowledge in an endeavor to make sense of the complex and ever-expanding world in which we find ourselves. For many years she was also the archivist for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. With input from many local UUs, she compiled a well-received history of the church, published in 2018. Because of the church’s active involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, the events of that on-going struggle necessarily figured prominently in her record of the church’s history. It is in this capacity that she serves on the advisory committee of the Bending the Arc film project.

Holly Jaap Hilton

Advisory Board

Holly Hilton is currently the Grants Manager at YWCA Central Alabama. She has had a long career in nonprofit fundraising, including serving as Development Director of the Hispanic Interest Coalition of Alabama, Major Gifts Manager at The Nature Conservancy of Alabama, and Administrator of the Women’s Fund of Greater Birmingham. A member of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham for the past 22 years, she has been a Board member and Secretary of the Board and has served on numerous committees; she is the proud parent of one teenager who is thoroughly enjoying the UUCB youth program. She has helped facilitate production of the Bending the Arc films through fundraising and publicity.

Donna Dohl

Advisory Board

Donna Dahl taught kindergarten to third grade students in a variety of locations, from Alabama to El Salvador, Dominican Republic, Mexico, and Hawaii. Friendships in these communities and school settings formed her love of cultures seen through the eyes of young children learning that the world is open for exploration. Having experienced first-hand the needs for housing, safety, and food security, Donna volunteers at food pantries in Birmingham and also assists refugee families through her service on the board of the Alabama Interfaith Refugee Partnership. Working for social justice, so that every person has opportunities to achieve goals and dreams throughout life, she has joined the Bending the Arc team to expand her work for human rights.

Virginia Volker

Advisory Board

Virginia Volker is a Birmingham Unitarian who grew up in Sylacauga, Alabama (the home of the Ku Klux Klan) in the 1940s and 1950s and became a lifelong activist in the fight for human rights. Virginia was one of the early white activists in the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham in the 1960s, participating in lunch counter sit-ins and integrated meetings (which were illegal in Alabama at the time). She is the daughter-in-law of Dr. Joseph Volker, who is considered the “father” of the University of Alabama in Birmingham and who facilitated desegregation of UAB’s hospitals and clinics; Dr. Volker was also the founder of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham, which was the first church in the city to open its doors to people of all races, hosting integrated meetings (again, at a time when such meetings were against the law) and promoting racial equality, despite multiple threats to the church and its members.

Bending the Arc | The Vote is a film about the hard-fought battle to expand voting rights to all people in Alabama in the 1960s. The film will premiere on Tuesday, October 20, at 6:30 PM CST via YouTube. Register for the free virtual event on Facebook or .

1820

THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

When the Missouri Territory first applied for statehood in 1818, it was clear that many in the territory wanted to allow slavery in the new state. Part of the more than 800,000 square miles bought from France in the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, Missouri was known as the Louisiana Territory until 1812, when it was renamed to avoid confusion with the newly admitted state of Louisiana.

Missouri’s bid to become the first state west of the Mississippi River—and to allow slavery within its borders—set off a bitter debate in a Congress that was, like the nation itself, already divided into pro- and anti-slavery factions.

During the debate, Rep. James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment to the statehood bill that would have eventually ended slavery in Missouri and set free the existing enslaved workers living there. The amended bill passed narrowly in the House of Representatives, where Northerners held a slight edge. But in the Senate, where free and slave states had exactly the same number of senators, the pro-slavery faction managed to strike out Tallmadge’s amendment, and the House refused to pass the bill without it.

After this stalemate, Missouri renewed its application for statehood in late 1819. This time, Speaker of the House Henry Clay proposed that Congress admit Missouri to the Union as a state that allowed slavery, but at the same time admit Maine (which at the time was part of Massachusetts) as a free state.

In February 1820, the Senate added a second part to the joint statehood bill: With the exception of Missouri, slavery would be banned in all of the former Louisiana Purchase lands north of the 36º 30’ latitude, which ran along Missouri’s southern border.

In March 3, 1820, the House passed the Senate version of the bill, and President James Monroe signed it into law four days later. The following month, the former President Thomas Jefferson wrote to a friend that the “Missouri question…like a fire bell in the night, awakened and filled me with terror. I considered it at once as the knell of the Union. It is hushed indeed for the moment. But this is a reprieve only, not a final sentence.”

Though the Missouri Compromise managed to keep the peace at the time, it failed to resolve the pressing question of slavery and its place in the nation’s future. Pro-slavery citizens who opposed the Missouri Compromise did so because it set a precedent for Congress to make laws concerning slavery, while abolitionists disliked the law because it meant slavery was expanding into new territory.

The Missouri Compromise would remain in force for just over 30 years before it was repealed by the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854. In 1857, the Supreme Court ruled in the Dred Scott decision that the compromise was unconstitutional, setting the stage for the Civil War.

Source

History.com – Missouri Compromise

Rev Julie Conrady

Advisory Board

Reverend Conrady is the Settled Minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham since 2018. The focus of her ministry is on healing religious trauma, making connections with one another and the community at large, and advocating for justice in our institutions and communities. She strives to highlight marginalized voices and to be a better ally. Rev. Conrady is a frequent panelist for social justice conversations, including racial justice, reproductive justice, immigrant justice, and intersectionalities. Before moving to Birmingham, she worked as a hospital chaplain for 6 years, focused on trauma, end-of-life care, and children’s health. When not working, Rev. Conrady is with her family: Josh Flores, educator and stay-at-home dad, children Stark and Ezio, and their black cat, SamIAm.

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About

The Bending the Arc Project explores the long struggle against racism in Alabama, featuring the stories of both African Americans and a small group of little-known white allies who fought for racial justice during the Civil Rights Movement.

The project was created and is managed by producer/director Pam Powell and producer/videographer David Brower, in partnership with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham.

The centerpiece of the project is a multi-part documentary miniseries.

Project Producers

Pam Powell

Director & Producer

After a 32-year career as a feature writer, university magazine editor, and director of publications and periodicals at UAB, Pam Powell began telling stories via video, audio, and photography in 2009; in the following years, she produced several biographical films (life stories captured through video interviews and archival media) and several short films for the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham. In 2015, she founded the Bending the Arc Project. The centerpiece of the project is a documentary film series; two of the films in the series have been released, including The Vote and Origins; a third film, Growing Up Separate, is currently in production and set for release in late 2025. Pam serves as director, co-producer, writer, and primary editor of the films and the Bending the Arc Project website.

portfolio website

Essay "Worlds Apart"

David Brower

Producer

David Brower has spent four decades filming, directing and producing commercials, documentaries, narrative shorts and feature films, accumulating many awards. Growing up in Chicago, then living and working in Phoenix, he moved to Birmingham 28 years ago, then moved to Placitas, New Mexico in 2021. He was involved with the Unitarian Universalist Church of Birmingham for many years (for his children and for social justice issues), without ever joining the congregation, giving him both a familiarity and an objective perspective on the church. He hopes these films will inspire people to continue to fight for equal justice for everyone. He serves as co-producer, videographer, photographer, and one of the two primary editors of the films.

portfolio website

Essay "No Sir, No Ma’am”

David Brower

Producer

Portfolio Website

Essay "No Sir, No Ma’am”

Shannon Leutzinger

Graphic & Web Designer

Shannon Leutzinger is a graphic designer and design director who has over fifteen years of experience working in marketing agencies as well as with in-house marketing departments. When approached by the Bending the Arc Project team to design the project’s branding, website, motion graphics, and marketing deliverables, she was honored. This project not only utilized her love of all things design and development, but it also tapped into her passion for history, community impact, and positive change. She is a South Alabama native who has called the Magic City home for years now. She is a graduate of Auburn University and obtained her master’s from Savannah College of Art and Design.

portfolio website

Gail Short

Producer

Gail Allyn Short is an award-winning writer and freelance journalist based in Birmingham, Alabama. She specializes in writing about business, government, social issues, education and faith for local, regional and national publications. Her work has appeared in American Profile, American City & County Magazine, Outreach, Business Alabama Magazine and Birmingham Watch, to name a few. She has covered everything from the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee and the minimum wage to the intersection between race and public education. When she isn’t working, she is volunteering in her church’s outreach programs. The work has included ministering to women at a work-release center in Birmingham. She is a graduate of the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

Essay "Silent Witnesses"

Gail Short

Producer

Essay "Silent Witnesses"

Solomon Crenshaw Jr

Producer

Solomon Crenshaw Jr. spent nearly four decades telling stories under the banner of The Birmingham News and Alabama Media Group before being laid off in 2015. Since then, he has told stories as an independent contractor, writing features, snapping photos, and shooting videos for various clients, including the Bending the Arc Project. Along the way, Solomon has garnered several awards for his work. He has penned many of the feature stories that are on the Bending the Arc Project website; he has also conducted a number of video interviews and produced the timeline that provides additional historical perspective for the project.

Theo Moore II

Archival Producer & Historian

Theo Moore II is a writer, historian, and filmmaker whose short-film documentaries shine a light on the often-overlooked history of African Americans in the American South. As the founding executive director of Hiztorical Vision Productions, his mission is to preserve and celebrate African American history. Growing up in Anniston, Alabama, he was inspired by stories of African American history he heard while facing the challenges of his own life, including the Freedom Riders’ stop in Anniston and the vibrant 15th street business district. A graduate of Troy University with a bachelor’s degree in history and a master’s degree in post-secondary education-history, he feels his academic background enriches his storytelling and understanding of historical narratives.