BGSU student’s film traces school desegregation in southern Ohio town
Shelly Howard
The story of how African-American families in a small southern Ohio farming town desegregated their public schools through
community action is told in a new documentary by a BGSU student filmmaker titled “Community Crusaders: Desegregation in Hillsboro,
Ohio.”
The filmmaker—Shelly Howard of Norwalk, Ohio—is a 2003 secondary education graduate. Her documentary captures on film the
recollections of community leaders and the now-adult children who made civil rights history by forcing their local school
board to obey the law.
