This event is a screening of the initial version of the Cleveland portion of our documentary film, Black Buckeyes: A Tale of Two Cities. Twenty-four Clevelanders are featured in a probing documentary film that addresses the African American experience in Cleveland. Produced and directed by the Reverend Dr. Leah Lewis, this film is a springboard to comparing the Cleveland experience to that of African Americans in Cincinnati. The film begins with a heretofore unknown historical figure--a runaway slave who descendants settled in Cleveland--that ties together the experiences of Black Buckeyes.

In Black Buckeyes, the Reverend Dr. Leah Lewis interviews African Americans in her hometown of Cleveland, a city seeking to emerge from eight decades of population loss and decline. Ultimately, she will engage activists in Cincinnati where African Americans are squarely in the midst of a social and economic renaissance. But first, Dr. Lewis introduces the story of Margaret McQueen, who with two other women escaped slavery in Parkersburg, West Virginia, crossed the Ohio River into Cincinnati and whose descendants are positively impacting life in Cleveland.

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