“Black Panther” actor Chadwich Boseman and Eisa Davis are teaming up and co-producing an untitled Little Rock Nine limited series.
What We Know:
- Carlotta Walls LaNier was one of the nine African American students to integrate Little Rock Central High School and the youngest but, correspondingly, facing a lot of hardships. When LaNier was invited back to the high school for the 30th anniversary of the Little Rock Nine, she was inspired to write a book about her experience, the book, “A Mighty Long Way: My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High.”
- “I thought that maybe I should do this and see how it works with talking to young people – at the age that I was at that time,” LaNier told NPR. “And that started me talking to high school students. And from there, it took a long time, though, I must admit, to get to this point of writing my memoir because I had pushed so much into the recesses of my mind, and it had to be pulled out. And it was painful.”
- This book led Chadwich Boseman and Eisa Davis to co-produce an untitled Little Rock Nine limited series, along with Seth McFarlane and Erica Huggins. Davis, the niece of scholar, activist, and Pulitzer winner Angela Davis, will write and executive produce. McFarlane and Huggins will executive produce as well through Fuzzy Door Productions.
- There hasn’t been any information about casting and the release date, but the limited series will broadcast through NBCUniversal and LaNier will be the consultant.
Little Rock Nine happened in 1957 in Little Rock, Arkansas, and at an all-white high school, where African-American teens became civil rights icons for fighting for their right to education against a violent mob of segregationists. The historical event tested the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision.
