Athens, Ga. – The Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies documentary Donald L. Hollowell: Foot Soldier for Equal Justice will air July 11 at 6 p.m. on Georgia Public Broadcasting.
The documentary follows Hollowell, a legendary civil rights attorney in the 1950s and 60s, through his service as lead counsel in the landmark case that led to the desegregation of the University of Georgia, his legal victory that won the release of Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., from the Reidsville State Prison and his role in the historic case of Preston Cobb, a 15-year-old black youth who was sentenced to die in Georgia’s electric chair.
The documentary premiered in April at the Woodruff Fine Arts Center in Atlanta.
The premiere event wrapped up a fundraising campaign to endow a distinguished professorship in UGA’s School of Social Work named for Hollowell. The Donald L. Hollowell Distinguished Professorship of Civil Rights Studies is the first distinguished professorship named for an African American at UGA. UGA President Michael F. Adams approved the faculty line for the professorship through the UGA faculty-hiring initiative.
Vernon E. Jordan Jr., chair of the Hollowell Professorship endowment committee, made the endowment announcement following the film’s premiere and a panel discussion in which he participated. Judge Glenda Hatchett, star of the television courtroom series Judge Hatchett, moderated the discussion. Panelists included Mary Frances Early, the first African-American UGA graduate and Federal Judge Horace T. Ward, a member of the law team that sought to desegregate UGA.
The Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies is an interdisciplinary documentary and research program at UGA committed to chronicling Georgia’s rich history in the civil rights movement. Senior researchers Maurice C. Daniels, dean of the School of Social Work, and Derrick P. Alridge, director of the Institute for African American Studies, collaborated with UGA faculty and graduate students in various disciplines as well as a cadre of others to tell Hollowell’s story. The film was developed in partnership with UGA’s Center for Teaching and Learning and Russell Library for Political Research and Studies.
For more information on the Foot Soldier Project for Civil Rights Studies, see http://footsoldier.uga.edu/.