Move When The Spirit Says Move

"We at the Dorothy Cotton Institute are excited to partner with PhotoSynthesis Productions (PSP), an Ithaca-based film company, to produce a documentary that will be a tribute to the life and ongoing legacy of Dr. Dorothy Foreman Cotton, a civil rights icon of the Southern Freedom Movement.

Dorothy Foreman Cotton served for eight years as Education Director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), and was the only woman on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s Executive Staff. The centerpiece of her leadership was the Citizenship Education Program (CEP), a popular-education intensive that moved thousands of people from a mindset of "victim" to that of fully-engaged "citizen."

The CEP equipped grassroots activists throughout the southern United States with a grounding in their constitutional rights and how to use the principles of non-violent direct action. In a brutal context where racial segregation, hatred, and the threat of terrorism were daily realities, CEP participants went on to risk their lives to register voters, organize community demonstrations, strikes & boycotts, run for office, and ultimately overturn Jim Crow laws. The CEP is a model for popular education and movement building. that has empowered freedom struggles across the globe.