Listen

Lately I've been stunned by a few different documentaries, ranging from Ken Burns stuff to Gasland to The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill. But perhaps most affecting was Jim Crow to Barack Obama, which premiered at the Tivoli last week as part of the annual St. Louis Filmmakers Showcase. The mainly local crew and subjects seemed to bring the film's topic closer to home, and many of those featured in it were among the large crowd viewing it for the first time Tuesday night.

Directed by Washington University art professor Denise Ward-Brown, Jim Crow to Barack Obama puts a handful of African-American young people in conversation with much older African Americans, including a 104-year-old, to discuss their experiences with regard to race in America. As the youth interview their elders and listen to these individuals' stories about growing up in the Jim Crow era, there's a quiet, even mundane, quality about it all that carries great weight.

One woman recalls her experience at about the age of 12 being taunted by a white peer and finally hitting back. When she told her mother what had happened, the response was that she must never fight back again or the family would have to move away. Another speaks of shopping in stores where salespeople would wait on her only after first serving white customers, even if she was there first. A St. Louis man recalls going to a Cards game as a boy. He befriended another little boy, who was white, on the bus ride there, but when they approached the gates, the two boys weren't allowed to enter together and became separated. The black boy was sent to an entrance on the other side of the ballpark. There are also several interviewees who recall traveling to Chicago to attend the open-casket services for Emmett Till in 1955.

While Ward-Brown's film includes stunning recollections from Rev. Samuel "Billy" Kyles, who was with Dr. Martin Luther King in the hour prior to his murder in 1968 and whose five-year-old daughter was one of the Memphis 13 in 1961, mostly the voices in Jim Crow to Barack Obama are those of far more ordinary folk, their stories embodying the many simple and suffocating ways that racism manifests itself. And the stories don't end in the 1960s--the youth involved in making the film share their own more contemporary experiences. One local teenager, who it turns out was sitting just a few rows behind my husband and me at the Tivoli showing, recalls being barred from foursquare at recess for being "too black" according to several of her peers. Charles Churchwell, who was the dean of the Washington University Libraries (where I work) from 1978 to 1987, touches on a number of issues, including what it was like to be one of the only African-American administrators on campus.

Watching this documentary only a few days after the conclusion of the discouraging Trayvon Martin case, I think what really sticks with me about this film is how it points to a looming need for more such oral history to be preserved and shared. As Churchwell notes at one point, "You don't hear about the smaller things." And it's hearing about and beginning to understand and empathize with the ordinariness and insidious damage of those things that can help illumine the big stuff. 

Also striking are the closing credits, where a handful of "in memory of" tributes feature images of several of the people whose interviews are woven together into this vital documentary. That especially left me with a sense of urgency and renewed motivation as I consider what I might revisit and help record and share. A trip back to Selma, Alabama, where we lived until I was eight, is on my mind. The days and years go by so quickly, and Ward-Brown's film and aging subjects are a brutal, beautiful reminder that there is no time like the present.

Following Tuesday's screening, Ward-Brown received a standing ovation and took some questions and comments from the audience. Mostly everybody kept wanting to know when Jim Crow to Barack Obama would be available for purchase and urging Ward-Brown to show this in schools. In addition to sharing the stories and insights recorded in her film, Ward-Brown said she wants to help other young people think about doing similar work and see what they discover "if they just turn that video camera on their grandparent, a church member, their neighbor and just listen. Listen."