Three Documentaries to Kick Off Black History Month

Chuck O'Bannon and Rosalind Withers (left) produced the
film "SNAP: A Look at Injustice in America." Annie Robinson and
O'Bannon (right) produced "United Front: The People's
Convention 1991 Memphis." Courtesy photos)

Marie V. Pizano

MEMPHIS, TN – A documentary is a film or video about a person or event based on facts. A documentary should also educate and bridge cultural divides, added Maria V. Pizano, founder and CEO of MVP3 Entertainment Group, which focuses of film, music, and community.

“This is part of my plan,” said Pizano, who is presenting a Black History Month series via MVP3, featuring three Memphis-based films: “Shannon Street: Echoes Under a Blood Red Moon,” “United Front: The People’s Convention 1991 Memphis,” and “SNAP: A Look at Injustice in America.”

“United Front” is screening Wednesday, Jan. 18, and “SNAP” is showing Wednesday, Feb. 1. “Shannon Street” was shown Jan. 11. 

The films are showing at Malco Paradiso, 584 S. Mendenhall Rd., with a meet and greet at 5:30 p.m., showtime at 6:15 p.m., and a panel discussion from 7:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

The Black History Month series benefit the South Memphis Alliance, which serves youth in foster care and families in need through social services, mentoring and advocacy.

“Shannon Street” digs for answers to that fateful night of Jan. 11, 1983, when a tactical squad from the Memphis Police Department stormed the home of Lindberg Sanders and killed seven Black men, including Sanders, after their hostage, officer Robert S. Hester, was beaten and heard pleading for his life.

“This is the 40th anniversary of Shannon Street,” said Pizano, an author, director and producer of the 90-minute documentary. The film’s grueling details, with reflections from both sides of the police-involved shooting, stir the conscience of those who remember the carnage.

“United Front” commemorates the 30^th anniversary of the 1991 African-American People’s Convention at the Mid-South Coliseum and the “people’s” selection of a qualified Black consensus candidate to take on the white incumbent Memphis Mayor Richard “Dick” Hackett.

Using the Democratic Convention as a model, Dr. Willie W. Herenton, formerly the superintendent of Memphis City Schools, emerged the victor and went on to eclipse Hackett for the office of mayor by a mere 147 votes.

Anniece Robinson, one of the convention’s “architects and conveners,” is the “United Front’s” executive producer. Chuck O’Bannon is producer and director of the 67-minute film.

“SNAP” gives us a glimpse in the life and legacy of Dr. Ernest C. Withers Sr., one of this nation’s most celebrated civil rights photographers. The film underscores the historic significance of Dr. Withers’s photography and what they really show.

An iconic photojournalist, Dr. Withers’s vast collection of images include the trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, in Sumner, Miss., who were acquitted of killing Emmett Till, the Memphis Sanitation Strike of 1968, the Montgomery bus boycott, Negro league baseball, and others.

“SNAP” is presented by The Withers Collection and produced and directed by Chuck O’Bannon. Rosalind Withers, Dr. Withers’s daughter, is the film’s executive producer.

Pizano believes there aren’t enough people in Memphis who know about The Withers Collection. “It’s been here,” she said, “but what about the students? They don’t understand all this; so I want them to learn.”

A connoisseur of history, Pizano says Memphis fascinates her – which makes it “a perfect fit for me to show Shannon Street and to show these other films [United Front and SNAP] to build up toward Black History Month.”

For their work, Pizano said MVP3, her entertainment group, is honoring Anniece Robinson for “United Front,” and both Rosalind Withers and Chuck O’Bannon for “SNAP.”  

“This is history,” she said. “This is the first annual [Black History Month series]. I’d like to kick this off each year in January and build up toward Black History Month.”

Maria V. Pizano can be reached at 901-634-1724. Tickets to the Black History Month series are available, with contributions to South Memphis Alliance, at https://smaweb.harnessapp.com/wv2/donate.

Ernest Withers’ Iconic Photographs on Exhibit with Till Movie

Ernest Withers snapped this photo of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr. at Medgar Evers's funeral in Jackson, Miss., in June
1963. (Courtesy of the Withers Family Trust Credit)

Ernest Withers' "I Am a Man" photo of striking
sanitation workers in Memphis, Tenn. 
(Courtesy of the Withers Family Trust Credit)

Rosalind Withers

MEMPHIS, TN – One of this country’s preeminent civil rights photographers is receiving widespread attention from Hollywood notables 15 years after his death this month in 2007. 

Rosalind Withers, daughter of Ernest C. Withers Sr. and director and conservator of The Withers Collection Museum and Gallery in Memphis, said her father’s work is reaching a global audience.

In partnership with Orion Pictures (an MGM company) and United Artists Releasing, some of Withers’ iconic photographs are being exhibited with others in tandem with the Till movie.

“We (The Withers Collection) worked with the premiere release of the film,” said Rosalind Withers, who met the president of Orion Pictures, Alana Mayo, at a prior Withers exhibit. 

According to Rosalind Withers, Mayo said, “We need to do something together on this film (Till) … and somehow incorporate the Withers collection into this film.”

The movie premiered at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills on Oct. 8 to much fanfare and debuted in New York and Chicago as well. Till also premiered in London on Oct. 15.

Rosalind Withers attended the Beverly Hills screening of Till and the exhibit entitled “Till: Impact of Images,” featuring African American photographers and journalists from the Black press corps who captured that dark and turbulent era in American history.

“It was amazing. It was probably one of the greatest functions I’ve attended in a long time,” Rosalind Withers said. “It was LA.’s first time seeing the film.”

Withers, L. Alex Wilson, Clotye Murdock, Simeon Booker and others who risked their lives for the story were described on the website for “Till: Impact of Images” as “soldiers without swords.” 

Their stories and images, cobbled together at times under dire circumstances, exposed humanity at its worst when Black lives were imperiled and relegated to a harsh reality during the Jim Crow South. 

The “Till: Impact of Images” collection is organized by K Period Media Foundation and Lead With Love, with support from Orion Pictures, United Artists Releasing, and the Till movie.

Personal photographs from the families of Emmett Louis Till and Mamie Till-Mobley and Medgar and Myrlie Evers are part of the “Till: Impact of Images” collection as well.

The Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, The Medgar & Myrlie Evers Institute, and The Withers Collection are cited for their continued fight for equality and battle for civil rights.

The Withers Collection also collaborated on a commemorative art piece for attendees at the Till movie premiers in New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago, and provided them with a keepsake ticket stub honoring the aforementioned organizations.

The movie is based on Till-Mobley’s courageous and relentless fight for justice after her 14-year-old son was brutally lynched in 1955. Till opened in select theatres on Oct. 14 and will open nationwide on Oct. 28. 

It was directed and co-written by Chinonye Chukwu and produced by Whoopi Goldberg, Frederick M. Zollo, Thomas Levine, Keith Beauchamp, Michael Reilly, and Barbara Broccoli. 

It has been 67 years since Emmett Till’s life was snuffed out by white men for whistling at a white woman in Money, Miss. His gruesome death is not the crux of this Till movie.

After the lynching of Emmett Till and all the hullabaloo over his death, Withers went to Sumner, Miss., and risked his life to photograph the trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, who were acquitted of killing the Chicago lad.

“One of the things that we showed in our exhibition was my father's image of Mose Wright pointing (at Milam and Bryant when he testified at their trial),” Rosalind Withers said. “He was the only person who took that picture.”

Withers published a pamphlet of photographs from the trial and marketed them as the “Complete Photo Story of Till Murder Case.” The cost: $1.00. The pamphlet is now part of the Smithsonian collection, Rosalind Withers said.

She has one other copy in her possession and declared it to be “extremely valuable.” A descendant of President Thomas Jefferson gifted it to her, she said. 

“It shows you how far-reaching Dad’s work [has] impacted our history.”