JUDY RICHARDSON
Series Associate Producer of EYES ON THE PRIZE, Co-Producer: MALCOLM X: MAKE IT PLAIN, Judy Richardson was a staff member with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee on its projects in Mississippi (during 1964 "Freedom Summer"); Lowndes County, Alabama; and Southwest Georgia during the early 1960's. She ran the office for Julian Bond (then SNCC's Communications Director; now chair of the NAACP) during his successful first campaign for the Georgia House of Representatives. She then joined with former SNCC staffers to found Drum & Spear Bookstore, an African American bookstore in Wash., DC that became the largest in the country, along with a related publishing house.
Throughout her life she has worked for a number of social justice organizations and was director of information for the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice in New York, working on police brutality issues in New York City and Freedom Rides to the Alabama Black Belt to counter Reagan's Justice Department intimidation of African American voters. For over 9 years she and a group of 5 other SNCC women have been editing Hands on the Freedom Plow, an anthology of SNCC women's writings. The work chronicles the courageous civil rights activism of over 50 women in the southern freedom movement during the early 1960's.
In addition to her filmmaking, she writes (including articles published in the academic journals Social Education and Public Historian), lectures nationally, and conducts professional development workshops for teachers, all focused on the Civil Rights Movement and its relevance to the issues we face today. C-Span broadcast her speech to Leadership America.
For the past 16 years Ms. Richardson has focused on filmmaking. She began her association with Blackside's 14-hour PBS series EYES ON THE PRIZE in 1978. She was content advisor for the first series; Series Associate Producer for the second. The series won an Academy Award nomination, 6 national Emmys, a Peabody and the top du-Pont Columbia Journalism award. She was also co-producer of Blackside's "American Experience" biography, Malcolm X: Make It Plain, and was a producer of its one-hour special on liberation movements in Africa. She is currently a Senior Producer at Northern Light Productions/Boston where she most recently produced & wrote a 2-hour documentary for the History Channel on slave catchers and slave resistance; completed a documentary for the National Underground Freedom Center in Cincinnati; and produced/directed/wrote A Fragile Freedom, a one-hour History Channel documentary on African American historic sites, among other films.
Contact the lecture bureau to schedule Judy Richardson for your next event.
the lecture bureau 
7 Crescent Street Cambridge, MA 02138 888-912-0355
