Last Disintegrated School

Last Disintegrated School tells the story of the journey of Thurgood Marshall and the Hillburn striking families’ fight for equal education at Brook School, the last segregated school in New York State to be closed in 1943.

Identical twins Alice and Alicia Crowe are first time filmmakers and lawyers. Last Disintegrated School tells the story of a segregated mountain community in upstate New York. They were inspired to tell this incredible story when they met Dr. Travis Jackson, a Brook School student. When the Crowe Sisters learned that Justice Thurgood Marshall was the lawyer who advised Hillburn striking parents, they knew this was a story they had to tell.

Their passion for telling this story stems from the fact that, as Mr. Marshall, they too are graduates of Howard University School of Law and trained under Charles Hamilton Houston, Dean of Howard University Law School, and NAACP’s first special counsel. Hamilton is known as “The Man Who Killed Jim Crow.” His legal strategies played a key role in almost every civil rights case that went before the Supreme Court between 1930 and 1954, Brown v. Board of Education.

Order Last Disintegrated School distributed by Infobase. Produced by A Crowe Flyz Productions. Get Last Disintegrated School here.



Ex-Slave's Fortune

Black women have built fortunes in America since the 1800s. Despite laws that barred their freedom, rejected their humanity, and sanctioned violence against them and their families, Black women have baffled the world with their ability to create riches through real estate, inventions, sex work, banking, hair care, laundry, and other investments.

This is the untold story of Cynthia D. Hesdra a black woman from Rockland County New York and the battle over her fortune in the 1800s. Hesdra was one of the richest people in Rockland County, black or white. We may have never learned about Cynthia D. Hesdra were it not for the battle over her fortune.

We interview Dr. Lori L. Martin, Associate Dean in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Professor of African and African American Studies at Louisiana State University, and author of the book Ex-Slave's Fortune. She is a native of Nyack New York.

Watch trailer for Ex-Slave's Fortune 

Assault on Mount Moor

When the existence of a Black burial ground is threatened by a land developer who wants to buy the burial ground to build a mega-shopping mall, one man fights to keep the burial ground and its legacy alive.

Hezekiah Easter, a local hero and the first Black person elected to public office in Rockland County in 1965 led the charge to preserve and restore Mount Moor Cemetery.

Mount Moor Cemetery was founded by five former enslaved men. Buried at Mount Moor are former enslaved Black Americans, men who served in the 54th Massachusetts Regimen, war veterans, and founding Black families of the Nyack area.

Irrepressible Crow: Our Name is Crowe

Cracking the Crow Code: The symbolism of crows to Jim Crow

To many, the crow is a sacred bird, powerful, intelligent, and wise. It speaks, it works, it remembers. The crow is a skillful messenger whose prowess in the animal world is unmatched. To others, a more widespread view of the crow is lazy, shiftless, and evil.

We follow the genesis of the crow to understand how this powerful symbol influenced the world, impacted social justice, and was the catalyst for the rise of an American symbol—blackface. We tell a unique story of the evolution of Jim Crow and the laws that resulted. We explore the role of crows in the ecosystem and the misconceptions surrounding them.​

Our name is Crow. Our grandfather, J. Crow, changed our family surname to Crowe. He aimed to protect his descendants from the stigma and the shame associated with Jim Crow. We crack the Jim Crow code.

This project received funding from the NYSCA and fiscal sponsorship from Third World Newsreel.

Check out Bird Notes as Alice Crowe finds connections between crows and racism in American history.