The Negro Is Here: The Life and Legacy of Mary McLeod Bethune
Principals
Better World Films was created by Dr. Len Lempel and Eric Breitenbach for the purpose of producing a documentary on civil rights giant and founder of
Bethune-Cookman University, Dr. Mary McLeod Bethune.
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Len Lempel
Producer/Writer
Eric Breitenbach
Producer/Director
Leonard “Len” Lempel, professor emeritus of history at Daytona State College, was a professor of history at DSC (1996-2015) and at Bethune-Cookman University (1980-1996). Len received his MA and PhD degrees in interdisciplinary social science from Syracuse University, and participated in the NEH Summer Institute, “African American Civil Rights Struggles in the Twentieth Century,” Harvard University, June 26-July 22, 2006, directed by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Len serves as an advisor to the Halifax Historical Society, and an HHS board member, 1999-2024. He currently serves on the Executive Board of the Florida Historical Society (FHS) and was FHS president, 2014-2016. He is the 2026 recipient of FHS’s Michael V. Gannon Lifetime Achievement Award.
Lempel has numerous publications, mostly on the history of African Americans in Daytona Beach & neighboring cities. His major publications include: “The Long Struggle for Quality Education for African Americans in East Florida,” Journal of Florida Studies (Vol. 1, no. 7, December 2018); “Toms and Bombs: The Black Civil Rights Struggle in Daytona Beach” in Irvin D. S. Winsboro (ed.), Old South, New South, Or Down South?; Florida and the Modern Civil Rights Movement, WV Univ. Press, (2009); and "’The Mayor’s Henchmen and Henchwomen, Both White and Colored’: Edward H. Armstrong and the Politics of Race in Daytona Beach, 1900-1940," Florida Historical Quarterly, Vol. 79 No. 3 (Winter 2001).
More than 20 of Len’s articles have been published in the Halifax Herald, the journal of the Halifax Historical Society which he edited from 2010 to 2025.
Eric Breitenbach has been a still photographer for more than forty years and a filmmaker for more than twenty-five.
His still photographs have appeared in such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Newsweek and Details magazines. His photographs are in the permanent collections of the Duke University Center For Documentary Studies, The Carpenter Center at Harvard University and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Since 1989 he has produced documentaries for National Geographic Explorer, The Sundance Channel, The Sci-Fi Channel and National Public Television.
In 2014, with historian Leonard Lempel, he produced and directed Hoppin’ Rattlesnakes, Oral Histories of Beach Racing In Volusia County 1903-1958, a feature documentary on the history of beach road racing in Daytona Beach.
In 2019 he directed Cultivating The Wild: William Bartram’s Travels, a documentary profiling six individuals following in the 18th century naturalist’s footsteps. The film was broadcast on South Carolina PBS.
He is a retired Professor Emeritus at Daytona State College and lives in Crystal Lake, Illinois with his spouse, painter and toymaker Kathy Maloney Johnson.