Black, Communities, Politics
In the 1950’s white Americans were fleeing inner cities, spurred on by a legal but unscrupulous real estate technique known as blockbusting. In places such as the Mount Airy neighborhoods in Philadelphia, PA, real estate companies would identify a majority white neighborhood and purposely sell a house to an African American. The agents would then blanket the neighborhood with flyers or even make phone calls to white homeowners alerting them to the ‘changing’ nature of the neighborhood, encouraging them to sell immediately before house prices dropped. The result of this was panic selling. Entire neighborhoods could be flipped in less than a month, creating racial distrust while lining the pockets of real estate agents and companies. Neighbor Ladies shares the stories and strategies of community activists and regular people who decided to organize and fight back against the system.
LeAnn Erickson is Professor of film and video production in the Department of Film and Media Arts at Temple University and has been an independent media artist and filmmaker for over 35 years. Her work has appeared on public and cable television and in media and art galleries, and has won national and international recognition in video and film festivals. In 2010 she completed ‘Top Secret Rosies: The Female Computers of WWII’, a feature length historical documentary that has screened internationally and is distributed by PBS, Inc. In 2014 she released ‘The Computer Wore Heels’, an interactive iPad bookapp that shares the Top Secret Rosies story with young adults. Currently she is developing two television series pitches and an animated documentary on the life of fitness guru Jack Lalanne.
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