Catholic filmmaker George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead (re)introduced American audiences to zombies in 1968. Romero famously fancied his ghouls as cutting social commentary. And that’s what we hope to do here.

Whether it was requiring all incoming freshmen to watch Knute Rockne, All American (1940), or parading the marching band across campus each and every day, Arthur learned a lesson quite quickly. The University of Notre Dame was, more than anything else, in the business of producing “Notre Dame men,” and that meant white, Catholic, conservative men. 

So we’re taking some creative license here. We’re not trying to paint all white men as monsters, or implying that Arthur was afraid of them. (If anything, they were scared of him!) 

We are trying to convey the culture shock Arthur felt back then. He’d hoped to experience integration for the first time. What he found, instead, was “the total absence of anything Black.” His motto that first year was simple: “Survive.”