University of Memphis communications professor Steven J. Ross has received a regional Emmy award nomination for his documentary Oh Freedom After While. The nomination is by the Mid America chapter of the National Association of Television Arts and Sciences, one of the four largest in the country in terms of area coverage.

Oh Freedom After While is an hour-long film about the 1939 roadside demonstration by evicted Missouri Bootheel sharecroppers. Among the visual materials in the documentary are hundreds of photographs taken by some of the greatest American photographers and archival newsreel footage that includes newly printed out-takes never before seen by an audience. Pulitzer Prize winner Leon Litwak called the documentary, "…history at its very best - illuminating, inspiring, and disturbing."

Ross' documentary has also received the 1999 Tennessee Independent Film Maker Award, the Juried Award of Distinction at the 1999 University Film and Video Association National Conference, and the Certificate of Merit at the 2000 San Francisco International Film Festival. At The River I Stand, the 1993 documentary produced by Ross, David Appleby, and Allison Graham, also was nominated for a national Emmy award.

Winners will be announced October 14 at the Chase Park Plaza Hotel in St. Louis.

For more information call Anya Michenko at 678-2350.

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