The Color Tax

Join NCJW Chicago North Shore for a screening and Discussion of The Color Tax: Origins of the Modern Day Racial Wealth Gap. The Color Tax tells the story of how a system of predatory home contract sales during the 1950s and 60s plundered enormous sums of wealth from the pockets of black families seeking the American dream of homeownership. In a compelling narrative format, The Color Tax documents who peddled the contracts, how and why they were allowed to do it, and what happened when black families organized to fight back in one of Chicago’s most heart-wrenching and perilous campaigns for racial and economic justice.

Our program will include a screening of the 37 minute film followed by a Panel Discussion and Q and A.

Visit https://www.crowdcast.io/e/ncjw-chicago-north-shore to register for the program.

Panelists include Beryl Satter and Bruce Orenstein.

Beryl Satter, who appears in the film will be on the panel along with Orenstein.  Satter’s book, Family Properties, was in large part the basis of Orenstein’s film. The book won the Jewish Book Council’s National Jewish Book Award in History in 2010.

Bruce Orenstein is Artist in Residence at the Samuel DuBois Cook Center on Social Equity; Director of Telling Stories of Social Injustice Working Group. Duke University

Orenstein is currently producing the documentary series Shame of Chicago: The Segregation of an American City. He also teaches documentary production at the Arts of the Moving Image Program. Orenstein founded and directed the Chicago Video Project, one of the nation’s first studios dedicated to producing videos for grassroots social change organizations. His television credits include the Emmy-award winning WTTW documentary No Place to Live, and the nationally broadcast PBS documentaries, The Democratic Promise: The Life and Legacy of Saul Alinsky, and American Idealist: The Story of Sargent Shriver. Prior to becoming a filmmaker, he led direct-action community organizations in low-income communities in Chicago and Seattle.