News Releases

Professor Bruce Chadwick One of Four Experts Appearing in Documentary Film, ‘Moving Midway’

Dr. Bruce Chadwick of Randolph, a professor of English at New Jersey City University, is one of four experts who appear in “Moving Midway,” a documentary film written, directed, and produced by Godfrey Cheshire that covers the physical relocation of a southern plantation while exploring America’s slavery legacy.

Dr. Chadwick, the author of The Reel Civil War as well as more than 20 other books, appears in the movie as a guest scholar, explaining the role of the slave plantation in the Old South and how it was later depicted in Hollywood films and on television. Dr. Chadwick was filmed on the NJCU campus in front of Grossnickle Hall with Hepburn Hall as the backdrop.

The 98-minute “Moving Midway” documents the relocation of the buildings of the filmmaker’s ancestral home, a Raleigh, North Carolina southern plantation, to make room for a shopping center.

In “Moving Midway,” Mr. Cheshire weaves his own family history into the history and mythology of the southern plantation and the south in America and American culture.

In the course of making the film, Mr. Cheshire unexpectedly discovers that he shares his roots at Midway with more than 100 African-American cousins.

Purchased by First Run Features, the film has been screened throughout New York City and will be shown at venues throughout North Carolina, Tennessee, Florida, Illinois, and California this fall.

Dr. Chadwick’s history books also include 1858: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Ulysses S. Grant and the War They Failed to See; The General and Mrs. Washington: The Untold Story of a Marriage and a Revolution; Brother against Brother; and Traveling the Underground Railroad.

News releases by Ellen Wayman-Gordon, and Kelly Resch, Office of Public Information.