There’s a good side and a bad side to being the network that starts off the TCA Press Tour. The good is that you’re catching the TV critics in your audience at their absolute freshest, but the bad is that that audience is almost certainly going to be the smallest of the tour, since not all of the critics have even arrived yet and many of the ones who have arrived simply don’t care enough to attend. But even though I’m not personally part of TV One’s primary demographic – Johnathan Rodgers, President and CEO of TV One, dropped the stat in his opening remarks that 93 percent of the network’s viewership is African-Americans – I didn’t fly from Virginia to L.A. for nothing, you know. And, besides, just because I’m not the droid they’re looking for doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate a certain amount of the programming they have to offer.
Take “Murder in Black and White,” for instance.
Hosted by Rev. Al Sharpton (who was originally scheduled to be in attendance but bowed out in order to be near his longtime friend Rev. Timothy Wright, who is recovering from injuries sustained as a result of a recent car accident), “Murder in Black and White” is a series of four one-hour documentary specials which were spearheaded by filmmaker Keith Beauchamp (“The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till”) and filmed in cooperation with the FBI in an attempt to help solve civil rights murders from the 1940s and the 1950s. I haven’t seen a full-length episode yet, but I was thoroughly impressed by the clip that was shown during the panel, which was, appropriately enough, filmed in black and white. The story would be horrifyingly gripping either way, given that it’s about Willie Edwards, a 24-year-old truck driver, husband, and father of two children who was forced by Ku Klux Klan members to jump off a bridge 50 feet high, but the starkness of the black and white film most certainly adds to the effect.
Beauchamp was in attendance for the panel, and he defended the arguably sensational nature of the re-enactments contained within the specials.
“After you see the documentary itself,” he said, “you will find that I have a way of telling stories. I like to tell the stories from the people who were there, who actually lived this atrocity. And the most important thing is for us to make these victims human. So often, we hear about these murders that occurred throughout the Civil Rights era, and you think it’s just a murder and we move on with our lives. But we have to understand that these people were also human beings as well. So using a reenactment, I really wanted to use the tools of this generation to capture the tension of this generation, and the way to do that is by visuals. Filmmaking to me is a new way of activism. No more should we rely on our leadership and our community to talk about these atrocities and bring certain issues forward. Nothing hits you more than a visual.”
Actually, facts do a pretty good job of smacking you in the face, too, as proven by Rodgers’ initial introduction of the panel, when he mentioned that the individuals who had been arrested for Edwards’ murder had their charges dismissed because “merely forcing a person to jump from a bridge does not naturally and probably lead to the death of such person.”
Though “Murder in Black and White” may be rough to watch, I’m confident that Beauchamp’s dedication to this project will make it a must see.
There’s another upcoming series on TV One that has caught my attention as well: “Unsung,” described by Rodgers as chronicling African-American music artists who deserved to earn superstar status but never made it. I don’t know that I necessarily agree with all of their choices (the first four programs will focus on Donny Hathaway, Phyllis Hyman, the DeBarge family, and the Clark Sisters), but the premise is sufficiently interesting for me to be curious about how the program will turn out.
