Olympic Pride, American Prejudice with author and director, Deborah Riley Draper

Olympic Pride, American Prejudice tells the story of 18 African Americans who defied Jim Crow and Adolf Hitler to compete in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Deborah Riley Draper is an award-winning and critically acclaimed filmmaker, motivational speaker, and advertising agency veteran. She directed the 2016 documentary "Olympic Pride, American Prejudice" and in February 2020 released her book that expands on the stories in the film.

Set against the turbulent backdrop of a segregated United States, sixteen black men and two black women are torn between boycotting the Olympic Games in Nazi Germany or participating. If they go, they would represent a country that considered them second-class citizens and would compete amid a strong undercurrent of Aryan superiority that considered them inferior. Yet, if they stayed, would they ever have to chance to prove them wrong on a global stage?

Thank you to our community partners for this week's program: The Northwest African American Museum,  The Ray Wolpow Institute for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Crimes Against Humanity at Western Washington University