Living Thinkers

An Autobiography of Black Women in the Ivory Tower

This documentary examines the intersection of race, class and gender for Black women professors and administrators working in U.S. colleges and universities today. Through their diverse narratives, from girlhood to the present, Black women from different disciplines share experiences that have shaped them, including segregated schooling as children, and the trials, disappointments and triumphs encountered in Academia.

Though more than 100 years have passed since the doors to higher education opened for Black women, their numbers as faculty members are woefully low and for many still, the image of Black women as intellectuals is incomprehensible. And while overtly expressed racism, sexism and discrimination have declined, their presence is often still often unacknowledged. Through frank and sometimes humorous conversations, LIVING THINKERS interrogates notions of education for girls and women and the stereotypes and traditions that affect the status of Black women both in and out of the Academy.

Winner of the Documentary Audience Choice Award at the BlackStar Film Festival.