The Soulsville Foundation announced today that it will debut its third annual free virtual Black History Month presentation created by the Stax Music Academy in conjunction with the Stax Museum of American Soul Music on February 3, 2023. This year’s film is a special celebration of the Stax Museum’s 20th Anniversary.

Soul of America

The 2023 virtual presentation, “Soul of America: The Evolution of Soulsville,” is free of charge to anyone in the world and is of special interest to students, educators, schools, school districts, and other youth organizations. The film is accompanied by elementary, middle, and high school study guides and teacher guides created by the Soulsville Foundation and mean to make the multimedia experience much more interactive than in years past. The study guides include topics ranging from Blaxploitation films, the 1968 Sanitation Workers Strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis, Ida B. Wells, Beale Street as one of America’s first Black arts and commerce centers, and Photography and the Civil Rights Movement. 

Black History Month Film

The new Black History Month virtual film and educational experience focuses on youth efforts to revitalize the South Memphis neighborhood known as Soulsville USA, which includes the original site of Stax Records and is now where the Soulsville Foundation campus is located. 

In the film, those efforts are met with the help of some legendary artists that made the neighborhood famous, and features the music of Isaac Hayes, Otis Redding, The Bar-Kays, Rufus Thomas, Eddie Floyd, and Johnnie Taylor, to name just a few. Videos have been filmed by Stax Music Academy students at such historic locations as Beale Street, the Stax Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum, and the historic Metropolitan Baptist Church in the heart of Soulsville USA.

“This has become one of our trademark presentations of the year. We are in the heart of where African American music was created, and we have the incredible legacy of Stax Records in our DNA. It’s what we do best. We now feel like it’s almost our duty to share this music with young people around the world because we are the only music school and museum in the world dedicated to preserving Stax and the Memphis Sound.”

SAID STAX MUSIC ACADEMY EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR ISAAC DANIEL.

The 2023 virtual Black History Month presentation with study guides is free of charge (users may make donations) to anyone and students, teachers, schools, and other youth organizations may register at this link: 

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