"A Street Corner Symphony," a semi-documentary film about "growing up black and poor" in the 1960s and 1970s in Cambridge's riverside neighborhood known as "The Coast" will be shown Saturday, Feb. 23 at 3 p.m. at MIT's Kresge Auditorium.
Basketball star Pat Ewing, Brother Blue, Cambridge District Court Judge Severlin B. Singleton III and many residents of the Putnam Gardens housing project are among the many local residents shown, according to photographer Dennis Dottin, who helped produce the film about the Western Avenue-Memorial Drive area.
It was the era when trolleys ran along Western Avenue, and the neighborhood kids attended the Houghton School (now the Martin Luther King Jr. School) on Putnam Avenue, the Webster School and the Morse School.
Boss Productions and the MIT Office of Government and Community Relations are presenting the film in celebration of Black History Month. The film runs about one hour and 45 minutes.
Tickets are $10, or $5 with a student ID. Kresge Auditorium is located west of the main crosswalk at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 77 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge.