Documenting the Black Experience - 1/18
The memory of Martin Luther King Jr. (1929-1968), the minister/activist who campaigned to end segregation and establish racial equality in the U.S., is celebrated in this country each year with a holiday on the third Monday of January, the month of his birth. This year, Martin Luther King Jr. Day falls on January 18 (three days after his actual birthday). To commemorate, TCM has scheduled a day of reality-based films to document and celebrate the Black Experience. Below is the rundown.
Jazz on a Summer’s Day (1959), a concert film shot at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, features performances by Louis Armstrong, Chuck Berry, Thelonious Monk, Dinah Washington and others. Crisis: Behind a Presidential Commitment (1963) looks at the integration of the University of Alabama in 1963, as a clash of wills developed between John and Robert Kennedy and George Wallace, then Governor of Alabama.
The Blues According to Lightnin’ Hopkins (1970), directed by Les Blank and Skip Gerson, focuses on the Texas country/blues singer, songwriter and guitarist. Musicologist Robert McCormick called Hopkins “the embodiment of the jazz-and-poetry spirit.”
No Maps on My Taps (1979), directed by George T. Nierenberg, concerns tap dancers Chuck Green, Howard Sims and Bunny Briggs, featuring a live performance at a nightclub in Harlem. Say Amen, Somebody (1982), also directed by Nierenberg, recalls the history of gospel music as performed by Black singers and musicians including Thomas A. Dorsey and Willie Mae Ford Smith.
You Got to Move (1985), directed by Lucy Massie Phenix and Veronica Selver, is about individuals who caused social change in the American South, all with a connection to the Highlander Research and Education Center in Tennessee. Freedom on My Mind (1994), directed by Connie Field and Marilyn Mulford, concerns the voter-registration struggles from 1961 to 1964 in Mississippi that led to violence and murder. This film was Oscar-nominated as Best Feature Documentary.
By Roger Fristoe
