The documentary The Lord Is Not on Trial Here Today was awarded two Mid-America Emmy Awards at a ceremony Saturday night in St. Louis.
The one-hour film by Champaign filmmaker Jay Rosenstein won in the categories of historical documentary and writing in the competition sponsored by The Mid-America Chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. The program tells the personal story behind the case McCollum vs. Board of Education, one of the most important First Amendment cases in U.S. history. The film recounts Champaign mother Vashti McCollum’s fight against religious education in public schools. She won the case in the U.S. Supreme Court, and later described the experience as “three years of headlines, headaches, and hatred.”
“I am elated that the film has received this prestigious honor and recognition,” Rosenstein said. “Although I have always felt that good work is its own reward, it is very gratifying when one’s own peers judge your work to be outstanding.”
The documentary premieres tonight at 7 p.m. (Oct. 12) on WILL-TV and will air again at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 15, followed by a discussion with Rosenstein and Dannel McCollum, Vashti’s son. Viewers are invited to call in with questions. WILL-TV is the sponsoring station for the documentary, which will air on PBS stations nationwide in March 2011.
The story, narrated by former M*A*S*H TV star David Ogden Stiers, is told through the first-person recollections of primary participants in the case, particularly McCollum herself, and her sons Jim and Dannel McCollum. Rosenstein conducted two separate in-depth interviews with her before she died in 2006 at age 93.
McCollum filed suit in 1945 after her son Jim suffered abuse, including beatings, from his fifth grade classmates, because he was the only student in his class not taking the school’s voluntary Protestant religion class, the same type of class being taken by more than 2 million students nationwide at the time. After she lost in lower court decisions, she won a resounding 8-1 decision in the U.S. Supreme Court, establishing the foundation for the separation of church and state in public schools.