"The story of Bell and his students is poignant and inspiring."
Review of
Colorblind
by
Matthew Whitaker
Assistant Professor
History Department
Affiliate Faculty, African and African American Studies
Affiliate Faculty, School of Justice and Social Inquiry
Arizona State University
Colorblind tells the story of one the nation’s most influential teachers, Alvin Bell of Detroit, Michigan. Bell played a key role in shaping the worldview and life trajectories of thousands elementary school children in Detroit. Bell loomed large as a mentor for these children for over thirty years as a teacher and principal. The documentary’s producer and director, Pamela Peak, was one of Bell’s students during the 1960s; the height of the Civil Rights Movement. Colorblind shows us how Peak, and her fellow students, were affected by the era of social change in which they lived, the ways in which Bell helped them negotiate the dark and twisting corridors of American race relations, and the turbulent times in which they lived. “As a teacher, Mr. Bell impacted the lives of thousands of Detroit public school children in a very positive way,” Peak has argued. “He was just one of those special teachers that you could never forget. He did something very right as a teacher and a principal in The Detroit Public Schools for thirty years. His story and his legacy are now living on to inspire a whole new generation of teachers.”
The story of Alvin Bell first appeared on national television (Good Morning America), on January 15 (the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr.), 2004. Peak told Diane Sawyer about Bell and his influence on her and her peers, and about how she organized a reunion of her third grade classmates. With the help of her “third grade boyfriend Timmy Lysinger,” Peak located all thirty-two members of their uniquely close and supportive class. “With each classmate we found, tears of joy were shed. We had not seen each other since the age of twelve.” Something remarkable happened with the location of each classmate. “Each classmate uttered the same identical words,” says Peak. “They would say ‘Where’s Mr. Bell? That man impacted my life more than any other teacher.’” Peak found Bell, and to the utter delight of his former students, he attended their reunion and permitted his former students to honor him and his legacy.
When Bell was found in 2003, he was nearing seventy years old. He remembered each student from the class. He, too, had considered this group of children very special. Bell took a photograph of this class in 1968. When they reunited in 2003, they discovered that 80% of the students had kept copies of that picture. As Bell’s story and Colorblind has spread across the country, Peak has found other students who had also been taught and inspired by Bell. “They all said the same thing about this wonderful man,” Peak has maintained. “He had a way of communicating to children that got through. He helped us to understand that we are all a part of one human family. He would simply get us to express our own viewpoints as children and found there was a lot of love in each child’s heart.”
The story of Bell and his students is poignant and inspiring. It resonated with the American public, and Peak’s interview on Good Morning America ignited massive national television coverage, and ultimately led to Colorblind being made. The film was released in 2005 and it went on to win myriad awards in various film festivals throughout the U.S.
In summerizing Bell’s importance, the experiences of her peers, and the era in which they came of age, Peak explains that “we were the kids who grew up in the middle of the civil rights era. Mr. Bell was our ‘port in the storm’ when the riots and news about Dr. King’s assassination came crashing into our childhoods. Mr. Bell was the first African-American teacher our almost all-white class ever had. He taught us to step into someone else’s shoes and view things from the other guys prospective no matter their color of skin. He shared with us what it was like for him to be a young black man in the late 1950s and 60s, and that really meant something to us.” When Peak’s classmates reunited in 2003, they rediscovered a common bond, and they realized that they, at a base level, had all conducted themselves in ways that Bell had instructed them to.
Colorblind airs Wednesday, Feb. 27 at 10:30 p.m. on Eight/KAET-TV.
