Screening of The Trenton Project’s ‘What’s in a Name and other Encounters with the Archives’

In the summer of 2022, six undergraduate student filmmakers produced a film about the original Passage Theatre play “Janet Wide Awake: The Hedgepeth-Williams Dream.”   The play looks at the desegregation of the Trenton junior high schools in the 1940s and was co-written and performed by students at the school.  The documentary goes behind the scenes to shows how students, historians, teachers, playwrights, and performers came together to think about this moment in the history of the Trenton schools and, more broadly, about equal access to educational opportunity today.

The September 27 screening will also showcase several micro-documentaries created by Princeton University students the spring 2022 history seminar, “Documentary, Youth and the City”, taught by Purcell Carson and Alison Isenberg.  The stories reflect the students’ collective research into young Trentonians in the 1960s—through documents and the memories of community elders today—and their responses to a tumultuous era.

Trenton Circus Squad, Roebling Wire Works, 635 South Clinton Avenue, Trenton. Free and open to the public.