On Wednesday, August 10, at 5 p.m. there will be a screening of the short film The Barber of Birmingham at the Katharine Cornell Theatre in Vineyard Haven. The film is part of the ninth annual Martha’s Vineyard African-American Film Festival taking place here on the Island, beginning today, August 9, and running through Saturday, August 13.

An atmosphere of hatred prevailed in America when the improbable alliance of black and white people, Christians and Jews, men and women, joined in 1909 to form the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the NAACP.

Patricia Sullivan, author of Lift Every Voice: The NAACP and the Making of the Civil Rights Movement, will put the audience into history when she speaks on Wednesday, Oct. 13, at 7 p.m. at the Vineyard Haven Public Library.

As author Tom Peters once said, “Leaders don’t create followers, they create more leaders.” This idea supports the foundation upon which the Weekend Renewing America’s Promise (WRAP) retreat was established, and on Friday evening the group heard from respected civil rights leader Julian Bond, now the chairman of the NAACP.

Andrew Young never formally studied economics. But he learned early in his time as a civil rights leader what a powerful tool for good it could be.

“Young people look back now and think the civil rights movement was about marching, getting beat up and bit by dogs, but the whole civil rights movement was really about the economy,” he said yesterday.

“The economic withdrawal campaign was what really changed the South.”

On April 5, beginning at 3 p.m., the Martha’s Vineyard Museum will host a special afternoon honoring those Vineyarders who fought on the front lines of the Civil Rights movement.

On exhibit in the Council Room Gallery is The Civil Rights Movement on Martha’s Vineyard: A Public History Mobile Museum. Funded by the Mass Foundation for the Humanities, this photographic exhibit is on loan to the museum from the African American Heritage Trail of Martha’s Vineyard. Board members of the Heritage Trail will be on hand to answer questions about the exhibit.

On Sunday afternoon, a plaque will be unveiled in West Tisbury in celebration of a small group of town women who, nearly 50 years ago, took a little risk to play a part in a glorious, heroic and sweeping change in our national history.

President Clinton shed the defiance that characterized the televised address following his August 17 grand jury testimony for a more humble tone when he spoke about forgiveness to a diverse gathering of more than 500 Vineyard residents and visitors at Union Chapel in Oak Bluffs on Friday.

The civil rights movement of the 1960s helped define the way our society thinks and acts today. Since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. led a march on Washington, D.C., 35 years ago, millions of people have viewed their place in America in a different light.

Now, the Vineyard has the chance to experience part of that legacy. Cong. John Lewis visits the Island today to celebrate the anniversary of the movement and reflect on the meaning of acts of service.

U.S. Rep. John Lewis of Georgia visits Martha’s Vineyard on Friday, August 28 to celebrate the 35th anniversary of the historic March on Washington and to introduce Walking With the Wind: A Memoir of the Movement. One of the “Big Six” leaders of the civil rights movement, John Lewis is the only major speaker at the 1963 March on Washington still living.