The Week That Was on Deadline Detroit

Sarah E. Ray: Detroit's "other Rosa Parks" - A Talk with filmmakers Desiree Cooper and Aaron Schillinger

June 03, 2021 Craig Fahle / Deadline Detroit Season 3 Episode 55
The Week That Was on Deadline Detroit
Sarah E. Ray: Detroit's "other Rosa Parks" - A Talk with filmmakers Desiree Cooper and Aaron Schillinger
Show Notes

Craig talks to Desiree Cooper and Aaron Schillinger, the team behind the documentary project "Detroit's Other Rosa Parks".   The film tells the story of Sarah E. Ray.  According to the filmmakers, "Seventy-five years ago a 24-year-old, African American secretary (Sarah E. Ray) was denied a seat on the segregated Boblo boat, SS Columbia. Like Rosa Parks, she refused to back down, taking her fight for integration all the way to the United States Supreme Court. Represented by fabled NAACP lawyer Thurgood Marshall, Ray won her case. Scholars argue that she paved the way for the seminal, 1954 Brown v. Board of Education, which found that separate was inherently unequal."   The two also reveal news that the National Trust for Historic Preservation will be including Sarah Ray's house at 9308 Woodlawn in Detroit on its 2021 "America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Sites."