HBCUs To Be Honored In New Film 'Tell Them We Are Rising'

A forthcoming documentary by an award winning filmmaker will celebrate the impact historically black colleges and universities have had on American culture.

Titled Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story Of Historically Black Colleges AndUniversities, the two hour long film will feature interviews with historians, as well as HBCU professors, alumni and students to showcase the institution's development.

"HBCUs have been instrumental in this country," director Stanley Nelson said in an interview with the Huffington Post. "Our parents and grandparents and great grandparents, there was no other place they could go to school. This is the cornerstone of the African American community. And I think that most people don't know anything about it."

Nelson also directed last year's The Black Panthers: Vanguard Of The Revolution documentary.

However, through this documentary Nelson hopes to not only highlight the importance of HBCU with black communities across the United States, but how protest movements were built within the walls of these institutions too.

"The sit in movement wasn't gonna come out of Yale or somewhere else," Nelson said. "It had to come out of Black schools. I think that's really important that we understand that it's a very different thing that if you were at a majority white school where you might have a little table at the lunch room, if that. And it's hard to talk about issues that affect the African American community."

According to the film's Instagram account Nelson is currently on an HBCU homecoming tour to interview subjects for a multimedia project. His HBCU tour has taken him from Alabama A&M University to Claflin University.

Tell Them We Are Rising: The Story Of Historically Black Colleges AndUniversities will be airing on PBS some time in fall of next year.

Until then check out a trailer for the documentary below.