Christal Cooper 2,046 Words
A Dance To Remember Between
“Poem” and “Documentary Film”
"The line of the
dancer: If you watch (Mikhail) Baryshnikov and you see that line, that's what
the poet tries for. The poet tries for the line, the balance."
Maya Angelou in 2008
“The poetic mode of
documentary moves away from the "objective" reality of a given
situation or people to grasp at an
inner "truth" that can only be grasped by poetical manipulation.”
Bill
Nichols from his notes “Modes of Documentary”
One
specific night in 2009 was just another night for poet Robert Gray – a time to
go to sleep, like he did the night before and the night before that.
He doesn’t remember if he was awake trying to go to sleep,
asleep waking up, or if he was half asleep, half awake? All he knows is that something extraordinary
happened, something that most poets only dream about. And it all began as a thought.
“The thought of always
seeming to be asked what it was like to hold that fire hose popped into my
head.”
He tried to push the thought away, and focus on sleeping, but
then the thought turned to ideas and images swimming through his brain.
whenever i say i’m from alabama
people seem to want to ask
what it was like to hold that fire hose
if I ever had to answer i’d tell them
i was born the day that happened
they seem to want to ask
what it was like to bomb that church
and kill those little girls
i was born that day as well
Gray, born on April 8, 1965, didn’t know where those two
stanzas came from – he just knew that they were words baptized in his brain.
Gray decided to get out of bed with one thing in mind – to
write those two stanzas down before he forgot them. He got out of bed and typed the two stanzas
into his laptop; but soon, he was typing in more stanzas. He continued typing for about 30 minutes to
an hour, and then it was finished.
i was born the day they marched across
the edmund pettus bridge
the day Wallace made his stand
the day martin had his dream
the day he saw the mountaintop
and the day after that
i was born innocent
free of all the blood
shed that day
but i was born into blood
i still am washing from my hands
“It’s
really almost like I didn’t even write it, but rather just recorded it. I’ve done very little to it since. I love it when poems happen like that. I wish they would happen more often.”
Gray and “The
Day I Was Born” had a one-year courtship – not so strange that a poem
chooses a poet as a companion.
One year later, in 2012, Gray (who is Manager of Faculty Development
Services in the Innovation in Learning Center and English teacher at the University
of South Alabama) had just wrapped up a meeting of Mobile United’s Race
Relations Committee at All Saints Episcopal Church when he was approached by
the director of Mobile United: “Would he
be interested in interviewing people about race relations in Mobile and then
posting the interviews on a website?”
Gray
said yes and thus became the director, producer, writer, and editor of Mobile
In Black And White.
Is it possible that the poetry gods are matchmakers –
encouraging humanity to match-make one living art form with another? In this case “The Day I Was Born” danced with Mobile In Black and White.
“The two things were
totally unrelated, but I decided fairly early on that “The Day I Was Born”
should be part of the film.”
Mobile In Black And White was a totally different experience for Gray than “The Day I Was Born.”
“There was no clear
process for the film, mostly because the final shape of the project kept evolving
(and I’m not even sure if it’s finished shifting yet).”
“The Day
I Was Born” was created in one hour
while Mobile In Black And White kept evolving on its own.
“It
was going to be interviews on a website, and then it was going to be short,
thematic segments that combined bits from multiple interviews, and then it
became longer segments, and then it became a feature film, and now it’s looking
like multiple kinds of segments and possibly multiple features.”
Another complicated aspect is that Gray is not a documentary
filmmaker by trade, but a poet, teacher, and an academic.
Gray and his team
approached it like a qualitative research project by gathering data through a
very specific interview protocol, coding it, and then trying to make sense out
of it.
One hundred people were interviewed and participated in Mobile
In Black And White – attorneys,
teachers, poets, writers, educators, politicians, businessmen and
businesswomen, consultants, historians, curators, and religious leaders. (List of participants is at the end of this
article).
“We had several lists
of people—those people in town who we just had to interview, those expert
voices we really wanted to interview, etc.—but I’m not sure how much that
affected who we actually did interview. We
lucked into a lot of great people.”
Initially, each participant was asked five questions, then,
based on their responses, more questions were presented to them.
“For a few interviewees, we came up with
additional questions, which was because we were typically interviewing that
person because they had expertise in a particular area, so we would ask them
specifically about that (e.g., Peggy McIntosh on white privilege or Morris Dees
on the Michael Donald incident).”
Gray
viewed each interview, grouped the clips by topic, and then created segments by
piecing the clips together in a way that made sense, artistically and
literally. He would then find visuals to
break up the stream of talking interviews.
Mobile
In Black And White is not your
typical documentary film – decisions were deliberately made to not have a
narrator, not have a bad guy, not have cheap emotional manipulation, and to
have numerous individual stories.
“Our purposes were about starting
conversations that lead to change, and we felt very strongly that following the
conventional patterns would work against us.
We knew that not following them would work against us as well, but we
still think we made the right decisions there.”
It was decided that Mobile In Black And White should be made
into a feature-length film, but Gray knew he needed someone with more
experience in video editing, but was not sure of whom to turn to.
Then
Gray’s wife Kim and Brian Butler’s wife rekindled their friendship after being
out of touch for twenty years, when a mutual friend was in need. The two families spent time together.
“Brian and I started
talking about what we do for a living, and when I said I was just starting to
work on a documentary on race relations in Mobile, he said he was a video
editor for the TV station in Pensacola.
He was very interested in what we were trying to do and offered to help
however he could. He had helped all
along with certain parts of the project, but for the feature, he did a great
deal of polishing work.”
Gray, Butler, and Joél Lewis discussed the specific aspects
they wanted to explore for the film.
Joél’s primary role was to provide guidance and feedback. She also played a huge role in the in the
decision making process throughout the project's history, providing great
wisdom and insight to our thinking on what the project should be.
“She played a huge role in shaping the
message, and perhaps more importantly, in policing the message, making sure
that we didn’t push too hard against the audience we were trying to reach.”
After
almost four years and Gray spending 2000 hours on the film, Mobile in Black And White, in association with the University of
South Alabama, Mobile United and the History Museum of Mobile, had its first
private premier on September 25, 2013 at the University of South Alabama.
The
official open-to-the-public premier was at the Crescent Theater in Mobile,
Alabama on January 19, 2014.
Despite
the attention garnered by the feature, however, Mobile In Black And White
is primarily intended to be viewed as four 40-minutes segments, with a
structured conversation amongst the audience following each segment.
“We still see the segments and the
conversations they foster as the heart of the project, however. We believe that is where the work will actually
get done. The feature is primarily
intended as a vehicle to drive people to the segments by bringing publicity and
credibility to the project.”
Gray
was pleasantly surprised at the criticism he received because he was expecting
something more and harsher.
“We’ve been told it’s too intellectual,
that it doesn’t have enough conflict in it, that it needs more victims, that it
doesn’t show “the other side.” As I
mentioned earlier, we broke a lot of rules.
We didn’t follow the expected formula.”
The
one thing Gray was not expecting was to receive a small grant from a local
community foundation only to have that foundation react in an unexpected way.
“The foundation had gotten some money
from a larger foundation to pursue “social justice” initiatives. When the board saw the first segment of our
(admittedly gentle) film, they put an end to such initiatives and said they
don’t want to do anything else like that…”
One
of the criticisms received that Gray does not understand is that the film lacks
emotion.
“I still marvel at how we can have poetry
by Natasha Trethewey, Sonia Sanchez, and Audre Lorde, and others, yet people
can say there isn’t enough emotion in the film as though the poetry were
invisible…”
Despite
this, most of the responses have been incredibly positive and reaffirming.
“The film deals with a very touchy
subject, one that most people don’t want to discuss, especially moderate and
conservative whites. So most of the
people who have voluntarily come to see it have been predisposed to being sympathetic
to the cause.”
Mobile
In Black and White is not a
biographical or autobiographical film on Gray; but nonetheless he felt
emotionally involved in the film and the film’s message.
Gray’s
paternal ancestors lived in Alabama as far back as the 1700s; and his maternal
ancestors lived in Alabama since 1930.
He was raised in Sylacauga, Alabama, the place of his first interracial memory,
when he was in the first grade, wanting to invite his friend, an African
American, to spend the night at his house.
“I was told that such a thing would not
be proper. African Americans were a
significant part of the population in Sylacauga. They were a part of every place I went. I would later realize that, for the vast
majority of them, those places were hierarchically arranged, but it was so
discursively ingrained that I didn’t know to notice.”
Gray finds the last fifteen minutes of the film the most
emotional – when Karlos Finley speaks how we can move forward by recognizing that
they are all our children. Perhaps, as
Gray watches the last fifteen minutes, he thinks of his friend he wanted to
invite to his house, but couldn’t, all because of the color of his skin.
“It still gets me,
even though I’ve seen that clip thousands of times.”
Perhaps the most difficult part of the film was to edit out
clips that Gray felt were beneficial, but had to be cut out due to length
requirements.
“For
instance, john powell gives a wonderful explanation about how white people’s
concepts of individuality and freedom are profoundly racial. We just leave it at that in the film, but his
explanation was just too long and sophisticated. We felt it would lose people. There are also some great out takes, things
that were just too edgy. But the thing I
hated to leave out most was probably Peggy McIntosh’s listing of ways that
white privilege plays out in our everyday lives. I just couldn’t make them fit.”
Mobile in Black and White was named one of the Top 50 Research,
Scholarly, or Creative Works in the history of the University of South Alabama and
named Mod-Mobilian Documentary of the Year for 2013. It has been accepted at five film festivals
around the country and nominated for Best Documentary in each of them.
For
more information on the film go to (http://mobileinblackandwhite.org),
and to contact Gray via email at rmgray@southalabama.edu or grayrobe@comcast.net;
PARTICIPANTS OF MOBILE
IN BLACK AND WHITE
1.
Adrian Kimbrough 032912,
Attorney, New Orleans, LA
2.
Aimee Nguyen 022312,
Mobile Housing Board
3.
Alice Kracke 082510,
Department of English, USA
4
Allen Perkins 070213,
Department of Family Medicine, USA
5
Anthony Outler 022011,
College of Education, Georgia State
6
April Dupree-Taylor
120212, Department of Communication, USA
7
Becky Atkinson 021911,
College of Education, Alabama
8
Beverly Cooper,
Consultant, Mobile
9
Brenda Juarez 052410,
College of Education, USA
10
Bruce Alford 091710,
Department of English, USA
11
Bryan Stephenson 083010,
Equal Justice Initiative, Montgomery
12
Carl Cunningham 013111,
Office of Multicultural Student Affairs, USA
13
Carla Wallace 092410,
Fairness Campaign, Louisville, KY
14
Carmen Harris 031211,
Department of History, USC Upstate
15
Chip Herrington 080310,
Attorney, Mobile
16
Chiquita McCall 091211,
Accounting Student, USA
17
Christopher Viscardi
021111, Religious Studies/Hispanic Ministries, SHC
18
David Alsobrook 020811, Museum
of Mobile
19
Denise McAdory 020911,
Department of Sociology, USA
20
Dom Soto 081010, Attorney,
Mobile
21
Dora Finley 010611,
African American History Trail, Mobile
22
Dushaw Hockett 092510,
Center for Community Change, Washington DC
23
Ellen Sims 061510, Open
Table, Mobile
24
Errol Crook 080610, Center
for Health Communities, USA
25
Facing Race 2010: Engaging
White People, Segment with Tim Rice and
26
Scott Winn
27
Foster Dickson 080210,
Writer/Teacher, Montgomery
28
Frank Hardy 083010, Artist/Activist,
Montgomery
29
Fred Richardson 072910,
Mobile City Council
30
Frye Gaillard 052410,
Department of History, USA
31
Gary Delgado 092410,
Visiting Scholar, UC Berkeley
32
Hank Aaron 042211, Atlanta
Braves
33
Harold Dodge 090111,
College of Education, USA
34
Hattie Myles 030411,
College of Medicine, USA
35
Ingie Givens 021911,
College of Education, Alabama
36
Jake Adam York 041611,
Department of English, University of Colorado, Denver
37
Jake Adam York 082111,
Department of English, University of Colorado, Denver
38
Jan Love 042211, Candler
School of Theology, Emory University
39
Jared Hurvitz 073010,
Department of Criminal Justice, USA
40
Jeremiah Newell 082610,
Mobile Area Education Foundation
41
Jim Flowers 012011, All
Saints Episcopal Church, Mobile
42
Jim Flowers 052410, All
Saints Episcopal Church, Mobile
43
Jimmy Knight 072910 1,
Mobile Community Action
44
Joan Reede 101012, Harvard
Medical School
45
Jerry Rosiek , 0401213,
Education, University of Oregon
46
Joe Johnson 083112, Mount
Hebron Church, Mobile
47
Joe Morton 083010, State
Superintendent of Education, Montgomery
48
John Powell 032912, Legal
Studies, UC Berkeley
49
Joycelyn Finley-Hervey,
Department of Interdisciplinary Studies, USA
50
Judith Smits 020811, Quest
for Social Justice, Mobile
51
Julia Freeman 092410,
Organizing Apprecticeship Project, MN
52
Karlos Finley 010611,
Attorney, Mobile
53
Kern Jackson 052410,
Department of English, USA
54
Kern Jackson 081012,
Department of English, USA
55
Kimberly Pettway 072512,
Department of Social Work, USA
56
Lance Hill 061410,
Southern Institute for Education and Research, Tulane
57
Latitia McCane 031512,
Bishop State Community College
58
Leida Javier-Ferrell
020311, Center for Workforce Development, Mobile
59
Luke Coley 071510,
Attorney, Mobile
60
Marc Burnette 071510 1,
Canterbury Episcopal Chapel, Tuscaloosa
61
Mark Berte 090110, Mobile
Area Education Foundation
62
Mary McDade 020911,
Retired Hairdresser, Mobile
63
Mel McKiven 052410,
Department of History, USA
64
Merceria Ludgood 011111,
Mobile County Commission
65
Merceria Ludgood 052510,
Mobile County Commission
66
Michael Eric Dyson 011813,
Department of Sociology, Georgetown, University
67
Michael Williams 031611,
Chief of Police, Mobile Police Department
68
Mike Mitchell 021111, Dean
of Students, USA
69
Mills Thornton 031011,
Department of History, University of Michigan
70
Morris Dees 080111,
Southern Poverty Law Center
71
Nashira Baril 111712,
Boston Health Commission
72
Natasha Trethewey 082111,
Department of English, Emory University
73
Nicole Carr 073010,
Department of Sociology, USA
74
Nirmala Erevelles 071510
1, College of Education, Alabama
75
Pam Adams 010711, Castlen
Elementary School, Grand Bay
76
Paul Landry 021911, School
of Law, Alabama
77
Peggy McIntosh 052411,
Wellesley Centers for Women
78
Phil Carr 020911,
Department of Anthropology, USA
79
PT Paul 071910, Poet,
Spanish Fort
80
Ramona Hill 052410, VP,
SHC
81
Randall Williams 080210,
New South Books, Montgomery
82
Ravi Howard 092810,
Novelist, Mobile
83
Rhina Guillen-Gomez
020911, Hispanic Ministries, Mobile
84
Ricardo Woods 062212,
Attorney, Mobile
85
Rinku Sen 052411, Applied
Research Center
86
Rose Johnson 051910,
Mobile Country DHR
87
Sam Fisher, 071213,
Department of Political Science and Criminal Justice, USA
88
Scott Winn 092510, School
of Social Work, University of Washington
89
Scotty Kirkland 081010,
USA Archives
90
Shakti Butler 092410,
Filmmaker, Oakland
91
Sonia Sanchez 041611,
Department of English, Temple University
92
Sonya Floyd 080310,
Chastang Middle School, Prichard
93
Stephen Black 071610 1,
Impact Alabama, Tuscaloosa
94
Steve Sullivan 060512,
AIDB, Mobile
95
Sydney Raine 080410,
Mobile Works
96
Terry Keleher 092510,
Applied Research Center, Chicago
97
Tim Wise 092510,
Anti-Racism Activist, Nashville
98
Tommy Bice 083010, Deputy
State Superintendent of Education, Montgomery
99
Tres Stefurak 081810,
College of Education, USA
100
Vicky Robertson 020911,
Hispanic Ministries, Mobile
101
Wayne Flynt 100311,
Department of History, Auburn University
PHOTOGRAPH DESCRIPTION AND
COPYRIGHT INFO
Photo 1
President Barack Obama
presenting Maya Angelou with the President Medal of Freedom
February 2011
White House Photo
Public Domain
Photo
2
Bill
Nicholas during a seminar at the Central European University in Budapest
June
2013
Photograph
attributed to Slavik Bihun
GNU
Free Documentation License
CCASA
3.0 Unported License.
Photo 3
Polyhumnia dancing.
Statue from Rome in the 2nd
Century A.D.
Polyhmnia is the Muse of
sacred poetry, sacred hymn, dance, eloquence, agriculture, pantomime, geometry,
and meditation.
In Bibliotheca historica,
Diodorus Siculus wrote, “Polyhymnia, becauseher great (polle) praises
(humnesis), she brings distinction to writers whose works have won for them
immortal fame.”
Photograph of statue
attributed to Chris O
CCASA 3.0 Unported License
Photo 4
Image
of Robert Gray interposed with The Mobile
Register’s article on the church bombing.
Copyright granted by Robert Gray.
Copyright granted by Robert Gray.
Photo 5
Image of Robert Gray
interposed with The Mobile Register’s
article on the assassination of Reverend Martin Luther King Jr.
Copyright granted by
Robert Gray
Photo 6
Robert Gray giving a poet
reading in the night.
Copyright granted by
Robert Gray
Photo 7
Movie poster for Mobile
In Black and White.
Photo 8
Robert
Gray
Copyright granted by Robert Gray
Copyright granted by Robert Gray
Photo 9
Movie poster for Mobile
In Black and White
Photo 10
Brian Butler on December 27, 2013.
Photograph attributed to Jessica Butler
Copyright granted by Brian Butler
Brian Butler on December 27, 2013.
Photograph attributed to Jessica Butler
Copyright granted by Brian Butler
Photo 11
Robert Gray, Delores
Fisher, and Joél Lewis at the San Diego Black Film Festival.
Copyright granted by
Robert Gray.
Photo 12
Brian Butler, Robert Gray,
and Joél Lewis at the premier of Mobile In Black And White at the
Crescent Theater.
Copyright granted by
Robert Gray
Photo 13
Movie poster of Mobile
In Black And White
Photo 14
Natasha Trethewey signing
her book Native Guard at the University of Michigan.
March 30, 2011
Attributed to Jalissa Gray
CCASA 3.0 Unported
Photo 15
Sonia Sanchez reading at
Northern Virginia Community College
March 20, 2013
Photograph attributed to
SlowKing4
Creative Commons
License: Attribution Non-commercial
Unported 3.0
Photo 16
Audre Lorde in 1980 in
Austin, Texas.
Attributed to K.Kendall
Creative Commons
Attribution 2.0 Unported License
Photo 17
Robert Gray, age 3, and
brother Drew in July of 1968.
Copyright granted by
Robert Gray.
Photo 18.
Karlos Finley
Copyright granted by
Karlos Finley
Photo 19
Brian Butler's daughter in her swing.
Photograph attributed to Brian Butler.
Copyright granted by Brian Butler.
Brian Butler's daughter in her swing.
Photograph attributed to Brian Butler.
Copyright granted by Brian Butler.
Photo 20
Robert Gray and Joél Lewis
being interviewed by Channel 15.
Copyright granted by
Robert Gray
Photo 21
Robert Gray.
Copyright granted by Robert
Gray
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