November 3, 2025 • 38 mins
This week on The Sounds of Film, host Tom Needham speaks with Guggenheim Fellow Alan Govenar about his new documentary Quiet Voices in a Noisy World: The Struggle for Change in Jasper, Texas.
Opening in New York theaters on November 14, 2025, through First Run Features, the film explores community, race, and healing in the wake of one of America’s most painful tragedies.
Govenar discusses the making of the film, his upcoming NYC screenings, and the restoration of his classic tattoo documentary Stoney Knows How, now part of the Criterion Collection. He also reflects on his long career chronicling overlooked voices in American culture through photography, film, writing, and archival work.
Alan Govenar is a Guggenheim Fellow, an extensively published author, photographer, filmmaker, sound archivist, and playwright whose work has explored American culture through an incredible range of lenses. He has founded institutions like Documentary Arts, the Texas African American Photography Archive, the Museum of Street Culture, and Truth in Photography. This year marks major milestones for him, including new photography retrospectives, three new books, and the premiere of Quiet Voices in a Noisy World.
The Sounds of Film is the nation’s longest-running film and music-themed radio show, broadcasting from Stony Brook University for over 35 years. Hosted by Tom Needham, the program has featured guests such as Billy Joel, Laurie Anderson, Hal Hartley, Whit Stillman, Nile Rodgers, and Cornel West.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you are listening to the sounds of
film and today we are speaking again with Guggenheim fellow
filmmaker, author and photographer Allen Governor,
whose new documentary Quiet Voices in a Noisy World?
The Struggle for Change in Jasper, TX explores how a
(00:22):
resilient African American community confronts its painful
past and reclaims its dignity through unity, art, and
perseverance. Alan, thank you so much for
joining us again on the program.I understand you have a lot of
things going on right now and I was wondering at the beginning
of the show and again at the end, can you just alert us to
(00:44):
some of the things that's that you have going on at the moment?
2025 has been a watershed year for me.
Beginning in January, there was a 50 year survey of my
photographs at the University ofTexas.
There's a commercial gallery that showed some of my
(01:05):
photographs and a few of those were photos I had made in
Jasper, which connects to the movie that's going to be
premiering on November 14th. In April, May, there was the
world premiere of a new musical of mine that I've been working
on for five or six years called Stomping at the Savoy and the
(01:28):
books written by myself and Phaedra Michelle Scott.
It's directed and choreographed by Edgar Gondo.
The world premiere was at the Delaware Theatre Company with
the New York cast and was highlysuccessful, got great critical
reviews and we're now in the process of working on the next
(01:51):
production which will be in New York City.
In May my novel Come Round Rightwas published.
It was a book that started as a poem when I was 18, became a
short story in my 20s and 52 years later became a novel and
(02:11):
that book has gotten a wonderfulresponse.
There were two non fiction booksof mine published, one in June
and one in September related to tattooing.
And then September 20th there was the opening of the 40 year
survey of the work that I've done with documentary arts at
the Center for Photography at Woodstock.
(02:33):
And that show is divided essentially into two parts. 1 is
a look at 7 projects of documentary arts over the last
40 years. It's called Everyday Culture.
The other exhibition is called Kinship and Community Selections
(02:53):
from the Texas African American Photography Archive.
It was curated by Nicole Fleetwood and draws from the
Texas African American Photography Archive, which I
founded in 1995 with artists Kalida Dulwood.
This archive is also part of thesubject of the Quiet Voices in a
(03:18):
Noisy World film, this show at the Center for Photography at
Woodstock. The Documentary Arts part is was
curated by Brian Wallace and includes photographs, folk art,
other kinds of materials and ephemera related to the scope of
(03:43):
the work Documentary Arts has done.
This film premiere that's happening November 14th is
itself a result of many years ofwork.
I went to Jasper, TX for the first time in 1996 and I had
heard about a black photographerwho died in the 1980s, Alonzo
(04:08):
Jordan. At that time the Texas African
American Photographer Archive ata full time archivist and was
who was working in historically black colleges in North and East
Texas. And through a Black history
professor, Wiley College, which is the oldest historically black
(04:30):
college West of the Mississippi.I learned about this
photographer. Lloyd Thompson's wife, Bertha,
was an elementary school teacherin Jasper, and she knew Missus
Jordan and he had been a consummate community
photographer and he photographedsmall town life in and around
(04:58):
Jasper, 70 mile radius for about40 years.
And after he passed, his studio was essentially left in place
because it was in the barbershop.
It was adjacent to his home. He was a Barber.
He was an elder at the church. My work on Alonzo Jordan
(05:23):
ultimately led to me getting a Guggenheim Fellowship to do the
book, an exhibition at the International Center of
Photography in New York. That was in 2011.
While doing this book, I met people in Jasper who were
starting to become more involvedin their community.
(05:47):
They were they had a close knit network to help black students
and Jasper and these little surrounding towns.
While in 1998, two years after Missus Jordan gifted the
collections Documentary Arts, there was the lynching of James
Byrd. And my work on Jasper took a
(06:12):
different direction. And by the time I was able to do
the book and exhibition with theICP in New York, so much had
come out about Jasper. But the part that was for me
missing was the photographs of Alonzo Jordan.
(06:33):
And I went to Jasper. I organized small exhibition
there in conjunction with the show in New York.
But even earlier than that, in the late 1990s, I organized this
show as an adjunctive photo festin Houston at the Community Arts
Collective. And there was a lot to be said
(06:57):
about these photographs because while Jasper was certainly a
divided place racially, there, it wasn't just an isolated
incident. And the more I looked into this,
there was, I discovered, this long history of virulent racial
violence. And when I was doing the book,
(07:20):
the person who spoke most openlyabout this was the District
Attorney who had prosecuted these cases.
And it was one of the first times in Texas, if not the first
time, when anyone who is white was given the death penalty for
killing someone who is black. For those people that are not
(07:43):
familiar with the the famous incident, can you tell us about
what occurred there? Well, there was an African
American in Jasper who was knownaround town.
I mean, Jasper's at that point probably had a population of
(08:03):
8000 people. And he was picked up by three
white guys in a pickup truck whoknew, who knew who he was, and
they were drinking. They brought him out to this
Country Rd. it's called Huff Creek Rd.
And they pulled into a little area off the road and they
(08:28):
chained him to the back of this pickup truck and then they
dragged him up the country Rd. until he was be headed,
dismembered and slaughtered and they were eventually caught.
This was a incident that attracted international
attention. It was intense trauma for the
(08:51):
community of Jasper, as one can only expect and understand.
But the depths of that Brahma resonated in a in a way that for
me is a model of what needs to happen in America as we are now
(09:13):
under the siege of this movementfor political motivated erasure,
particularly of African Americanhistory and life culture.
What do you mean by that exactly?
The erasure. Of history, well, well, the way
in which Texas is now leading the charge with Florida among
(09:38):
other States, and limiting the discussions of slavery, African
American life. Slavery has been, you know,
called involuntary dislocation. And some books, there are people
who are in this mindset that theonly parts of African American
(10:08):
history that are worth telling don't relate to racial violence.
And that's a problem. These are people who, like
Holocaust deniers, do not want to accept the grim reality of
history. But if we do not accept this and
(10:33):
act upon it, then this imagery and these descriptions will not
only be lost, but our society will be, from my point of view,
inevitably played by a critical dilemma.
And that's where we are at the present time.
(10:54):
You mentioned the term of community photographer.
Is this something that most communities have?
And what exactly does a community photographer do?
When I first started documentingAfrican American photography in
Texas, it was by necessity in mymind.
(11:18):
I had received the Commission from the Dallas Museum of Art in
1984 to do a book called Living Texas Blues.
That's the series of three shortfilms about Texas Blues and an
anthology of recordings. And this was commissioned as
(11:39):
part of an exhibition called Lone Star Regionalism, which
looked at regionalist Texas painters who rose to national
prominence in the 1930s. The idea, the concept for Living
Texas Blues was to show how there was a parallel growth of
(12:02):
regional culture and the development of Blues in Texas,
which was also beginning to assert its influence on the
national scene. When doing that book, I was
looking for the work of Black photographers and it was a 2
(12:23):
volume history of Black photography that was being
published by Texas Monthly Press.
And when I talked to the two curators who were certainly
prominent, they said that their charge only gave them enough
time and funding to look at existing collections.
And there were no black photographers in their books
(12:44):
because they could not identify.And at that time they were in an
existing collection. So for me, I wanted to know
more. I began looking through business
directories, black business directories, and found the phone
numbers of photographers who while these directories may have
(13:06):
been from the 1940s, they were still have the same phone
number. And I began to document a
generation, more than one generation of African American
photographers who were then in their 70s and 80s.
And that led to exhibitions through documentary arts.
And it led to two books, one that I did what's called The
(13:31):
Early Years of Rhythm and Blues on the Houston photographer
Benny Joseph. The next one was called
Portraits of Community African American Photography in Texas.
And it was a series of oral histories that I did with these
photographers who donated their collections to this nonprofit
(13:51):
archive. And then the third was the book
Jasper, TX and the community photographs of Alonzo Jordan.
The idea of community photography is understanding the
role that these photographers, they weren't in every community,
(14:12):
but they were all, you know, throughout different areas of
Texas because there was a large African American population.
And a lot of. The archive traces the lineage
of and the influence of a Black East Texas photographer, AC
(14:33):
Teal, who started his first studio in Houston in 1910 and a
school for black photographers with his wife, Eleanor Teal in
1942. Most of the photographs in our
archive relate to AC Teal and his students.
Alonzo Jordan was someone thoughthat was self-taught and he
(14:57):
served this large geographic area in addition to working as a
Barber. He understood the need of his
community in the way in which photographs can bolster self
esteem and to affirm the dignityof his community.
(15:18):
In the same way that you go and look for these authentic
photographs, it seems like it inthis movie and other films I've
seen of yours, you also look forlesser known authentic music.
Can you tell us a little bit about some of the music that you
(15:39):
feature and what the connection is?
When I first, like many of my projects, when I first started
this work on black photography, I just wasn't thinking making a
movie. I was thinking about documenting
the photographers, bringing themto a bigger their work to a
(16:04):
bigger audience, and the projectevolved.
For me, the turning point for making this a movie began.
After the exhibition that was atthe International Center of
(16:26):
Photography. I was contacted by an alumni
association of the JH Rowe High Schools in Jasper and they
wanted to purchase 300 copies ofmy book, which they did and
(16:46):
which they sent to members. An alumni of that school over
the decades that it existed around the country.
And while Documentary Arts was only able to document because of
the condition of the collections, when we got them,
about 5% of the people in these photographs, they sent back a
(17:11):
spreadsheet with 95% identified.And they were beginning to
enlarge their activities and to find ways within their community
to overcome the trauma of the James Byrd lynching and to help
restore the self esteem of the people who live and work there.
(17:39):
And so I began talking a lot to one of the people who's the main
figure in the film. His name's George Adams, and he
was in the industrial engineer. He was retired and he was a
designer and done a lot of different kinds of work and had
been both in in the military, but also worked in the corporate
(18:02):
world. And he retired, and he still had
family property and Jasper and wanted to do more with Jasper.
And he reconnected and continuedhis associations with people who
went to the segregated school. And so the movie really focuses
(18:24):
on this group of volunteers and most of whom are now in their
70s and 80s, and what they're doing on a local level to
restore and reclaim their own history and to help African
Americans and hopefully the population at large to heal from
(18:48):
this terrible incident, but to heal not only that, but the, you
know, the awful legacy that led to that incident.
So the movie goes in different directions.
Music is very important here andwhat the real and it began to
(19:10):
coalesce. Originally I had made a series
of little short films about Jasper, but then through my
research I found recordings thatJohn Lomax had done and Jasper
in 1940. And one of the people that he
recorded that interviewed, BillyMcRae, was the paternal ancestor
(19:35):
of many of the people I was interviewing related to the
photographs and other aspects ofwhat was they were doing in
their community. And there were two people
actually that John Lomax recorded.
One was Billy McRae and another one was called.
(20:03):
I'm sorry. That's OK.
That was distracted here. And the other recordings that
John Lomax did, we're done with a man by the name of Arthur,
brother-in-law Armstrong. And then I began looking more
deeply into this period of time between 1930 and the early 1940s
(20:24):
and these amazing recordings of different types of vernacular
music and in that region that very much kind of paralleled the
kind of perimeter of where Alonzo Jordan was photographing.
I mean, he began, he was photographing in the 1940s.
(20:47):
And then with those connections,it gave a different life to
understanding that area. These recordings, while they're
known and they've been reissued on document records and they're
well known within the Library ofCongress to to some extent, but
(21:09):
they are remarkable. In addition, I had at the time,
when founding the archive with Kalina Doolin, had met Russell
Lee, who was also photographing in this region of East Texas.
So the movie interweaves these different and somewhat
(21:31):
unexpected threads that converge.
It's so interesting, you know, can I, can I ask you?
And I watched the movie and I agree with everything you're
saying about the need to preserve history and tell these
stories. It it just seems like the
country though, right now is so divided.
(21:53):
And I, and I've heard people, I guess on the other side of the
political spectrum and, you know, some of it's just
terrible. But but there are others who I,
I believe, genuinely feel that they too, are trying to preserve
history and that others are trying to tear down their
(22:14):
history. And I'm just fascinated with the
whole sense of people, no matterwhat side of somebody is on,
clinging to their version of thetruth and how important it is to
people. And I was curious like, you
know, what do you think about that?
(22:36):
What you've identified is a hugeissue, and for me, it's one of
the most pressing issues of our time because the way history is
told will shape the way people act in the present and in the
future. And the battleground for this
(22:56):
begins in early childhood education.
And what are the books that children are reading?
What's the story that they're learning about the past?
And I don't know if you're familiar with my children's
book, but my first children's book called Osceola Memories of
(23:17):
a Sharecropper's Daughter, whichwas published in 2000.
It was based on an artist's bookthat I had done about this
woman, Osceola Maze. And Osceola Maze was like many
people that I document. She became part of my work in
many different media. But this book is about Osceola,
(23:41):
who was an oral poet. She sang a cappella spirituals,
which is How I Met her through amember of her church.
I was organizing a Folk Festivaland she and Miss Raven said you
must meet Missus Mays. And Missus Mays, when she
introduced herself, she said that she it wasn't, she didn't
perform correct singing. And I asked her, what do you
(24:03):
mean by that? She said, well, it's not the way
people sing today, it's the songs I learned from Grandma
Walker, who was 10 when slavery ended.
So she preserved this style of singing from the 19th century.
And she was someone who had worked as a Navy and domestic
during her life. While the children's book got a
(24:26):
lot of attention, it won first prize in the New York Book Show
for young readers. Non fiction got a lot of
recognition and I ended up doinga film about Osceola.
In addition, she became part of a stage show called Texas in
Paris, which I was done and produced in Paris in 1989 and
(24:50):
became an Off Broadway show in 2015 and went back to Paris in
2016 with a as a show with French super titles.
By then Osceola was deceased andthe woman actress playing her
was Lilius White, Tony Award winner.
(25:13):
So in any event, the Osceola book and the Osceola Maze
project that spanned a lot of years was all about that.
It was it was a non fiction bookfor children.
It talked about slavery. These were stories.
Osceola was an oral poet. Her grandmother, who was a
(25:37):
slave, composed one poem in her life called the Civil War.
It's very powerful. Another poem was the black man's
plea for justice. And so at that point in time,
this went widely into the publicschools.
(25:57):
It became a scholastic book. In today's world, it would
probably be banned. And so the forces that be that
are, you know, serving their influence over public education.
This is not new. And, you know, for me, because I
study this period of history, I've seen this coming.
(26:21):
I mean, the United States is a divided nation.
It always has been the Revolutionary War, the with this
similar kinds of divisions, the Civil War, the McCarthy era.
So we're constantly having to stay vigilant to these issues.
(26:43):
This isn't new, and it's not in the end, the best I think anyone
can do is to act on a family level, on a, you know, public
school level, but on a communitylevel.
And that's what this movie's about for me.
This movie is about hope and howwe can do quiet things and just
(27:10):
move the narrative that we want to tell forward.
So the people in Jasper, they put up, you know, markers on the
side of the highway. They've built little museums.
Yeah, I like that. They have a scholarship fund for
black kids in these little country towns.
(27:32):
That's great. You know, I was involved in
education for many years and youknow, things go in cycles and I
don't know what the answer is because it just seems like, you
know, things go in a certain direction for a long time and a
certain part of the population is unhappy, then it goes in a
different direction and then theother population is unhappy.
(27:55):
I don't know exactly what the right thing to do is.
I agree. Everyone should be trying to get
their voice in there to represent the accurate views of
history. I think it's tough because, you
know, school is compulsory. Like, you know, you don't have a
(28:17):
choice. You have to send your kids and
parents have strong feelings about, you know, what their kids
are being indoctrinated with. But but there has to be some
system in place where people canhave the option to see your
books and your films and other people's work and think for
(28:41):
themselves and try and, you know, deal with tough issues and
think about it and come to conclusions.
And I love your work because you, you do make us feel.
You make us think. And I'm sorry, earlier when you
were rattling through all the different things you were doing
this year, I, I was just kind oflaughing in the background
(29:04):
because I was just blown away. I, I was blown away at your
productivity. How?
How do you find the energy to doso many different kinds of
projects in so many different art forms?
(29:24):
I don't have a complicated life in many respects.
Clearly I take on complicated issues, but I live rather simple
and orderly life and I walk 4 to6 miles every day.
(29:48):
I drive to my office, I listen to the same and my office is
about 7 or 8 minutes from my apartment where I live with my
wife and I have the same I listen to the same piece of
music every morning. I go walking on this.
It's kind of a nature trail. Or if it's hot, I walk through
(30:10):
the neighborhoods and I come back, have a cup of coffee and
start doing what I do. I have one with my wife who
believed to Doolin, who's an artist.
And we have a little campus of buildings and a which has
historically been kind of a low income, mixed racial
neighborhood in Dallas. And we have lunch together.
(30:34):
The Billy afternoon. We have coffee together, I come
back, I write more and or work on some creative activity and I
go for another walk and I listento another piece of music, which
is John Colfrane's ballads on myway home.
My morning music is Segovia playing Astorius.
(30:57):
So I think it sets a tone to my day and it's not to say that I
found an experience different degrees of anguish during the
day dealing with the realities of day-to-day life.
But I'm also a very family oriented person.
So I have two wonderful children.
I now have 4 grandchildren. And I keep looking in the mirror
(31:20):
and saying I don't know, am I really old enough for this?
Because the part of me that creates every day is to kid in
me and I have this the joy that I had when I was growing up.
And so the work that I make goesin a lot of different places.
(31:43):
I used to joke with my friends that my work was and lesser
known places everywhere. Man, I, I, I love the structure
of your day and we'll have to goback to that again sometime.
I don't know if you've written about it, but I think a lot of
us could learn from that. The music, the coffee, the, the
(32:03):
time with a significant other person, some nature walks and
some work that you enjoy. That sounds like the perfect
combination. It is, you know, I.
I like that, but everyone's a little bit different.
You know, I'm, I'm not prescriptive.
Everyone has to find that. And, and my novel come Round
(32:27):
right is in part about that. It's not the specifics of what I
do now, but it's how do we come to terms with our life?
How do we overcome trauma? How do we we all experience
trauma in different degrees, in different ways.
(32:47):
It's finding it's a way to go deeper into ourselves.
And because I think that the most beneficial outcome is
internal and I want both my wifeand I.
(33:10):
She's an artist and she just hada big show opening in here at
Darren Clearly Gallery and we'reboth going strong.
We have no intent to retire. And so for us, the joy is in the
making. Well, the film we were speaking
about for most of our discussionis Quiet Voices in a Noisy
(33:31):
World, The Struggle for Change in Jasper, TX.
Allen, just tell our listeners one more time, where can they
see this film and some of the other things that you were
talking about earlier? Quiet Voices in a Noisy World
opens November 14th at Cinema Village near Union Square,
(33:55):
Greenwich Village in New York City.
Alongside Quiet Voices in the Noisy World are 12 other films
of mine. There's one program that's for
short films that I made beginning with my first film
that's screened in New York called Stoney Knows How.
That premiered in 1981 to the present.
(34:19):
Then there are other features ofmine that have been released
over the last several years and they focus on a variety of
subjects. There's a one film is called The
Beat Hotel that was shot about the legendary dwelling of the
American Beats in Paris between the years 1951 and 57.
(34:44):
Excuse Me in 1961 is a film of mine called Master Qi and the
Monkey King that was shot in NewYork City.
It's a Chinese language film. It's about a Chinese opera
company that was started by Qixufang in New York City, and
it's an extraordinary story. But the film is entirely in
(35:06):
Chinese, and I worked with the Chinese community and with
translators. It was a great challenge, but
that film screened for seven years on Netflix and attracted a
wide audience. Another film of mine I think
that has great contemporary relevance is called The Devil's
Swing. The Devil's Swing is a movie
(35:29):
about a region of the Texas Mexico border called La Junta de
Los Rios and made this film in the 1990s.
And it was at that time about this little area, this small
border crossing where one could pay a Mexican man a dollar and
(35:49):
he would row you from Texas to Mexico.
It was completely legal. People on both sides of the
border were related. Not only did they transport
goods like lumber or refrigerator on the Texas side,
a woman, Lucia Rede Madrid, whose family had one of the
(36:10):
original land grants to this area in the 1918 thirties and
had operated a general store that she turned into a lending
library. And she was written up in
National Geographic as having the largest private lending
library in the world. And these books were ferried
(36:31):
across the river. It wasn't.
It was an area that was totally is still, but it was even more
so remote. It's the point.
It's where the Rio Conscious joins the Rio Grande to create a
small Oasis. It's where Cabeza Tavaca crossed
(36:54):
from Mexico and to Texas and to New Mexico.
It's an apocryphal spot in the world, and in the 90s, this
continued to exist. But the movie is about I should
It was made over a period of five years, and it ends with the
tragic killing of a Mexican American boy on the Texas side
(37:17):
of the border. He was hurting his goats, had a
World War One carbine rifle fendoff snakes and a Marine in a
Gilly suit shot him at 200 yardshis straight A student.
And when they went to his bedroom, they discovered that on
the wall was a poster because hewanted to become a Marine.
(37:42):
It was the beginning of the militarization of the border.
Another film of mine that's showing is called Serving Second
Chances, which is about homelessness.
It follows 3 homeless people over a period of three years.
So I hope everyone will go to the Cinema Village site and
(38:02):
check it out. There's screenings five times a
day, and it's the biggest presentation of my movies ever
in New York City. That's incredible and I wanted
to really highly recommend that people go and support it.
Alan, it was so great speaking to you again as usual, and I
wish you the best with this and all the projects that you're
(38:24):
working on. And we'll have to touch base
again with your next project. So thanks again for coming on
the program and I'll talk to youagain in the future.
OK. Thank you a lot, Tom.
I really appreciate it.
Hi, this is Tom Needham and you are listening to the sounds of
film and today we are speaking again with Guggenheim fellow
filmmaker, author and photographer Allen Governor,
whose new documentary Quiet Voices in a Noisy World?
The Struggle for Change in Jasper, TX explores how a
(00:22):
resilient African American community confronts its painful
past and reclaims its dignity through unity, art, and
perseverance. Alan, thank you so much for
joining us again on the program.I understand you have a lot of
things going on right now and I was wondering at the beginning
of the show and again at the end, can you just alert us to
(00:44):
some of the things that's that you have going on at the moment?
2025 has been a watershed year for me.
Beginning in January, there was a 50 year survey of my
photographs at the University ofTexas.
There's a commercial gallery that showed some of my
(01:05):
photographs and a few of those were photos I had made in
Jasper, which connects to the movie that's going to be
premiering on November 14th. In April, May, there was the
world premiere of a new musical of mine that I've been working
on for five or six years called Stomping at the Savoy and the
(01:28):
books written by myself and Phaedra Michelle Scott.
It's directed and choreographed by Edgar Gondo.
The world premiere was at the Delaware Theatre Company with
the New York cast and was highlysuccessful, got great critical
reviews and we're now in the process of working on the next
(01:51):
production which will be in New York City.
In May my novel Come Round Rightwas published.
It was a book that started as a poem when I was 18, became a
short story in my 20s and 52 years later became a novel and
(02:11):
that book has gotten a wonderfulresponse.
There were two non fiction booksof mine published, one in June
and one in September related to tattooing.
And then September 20th there was the opening of the 40 year
survey of the work that I've done with documentary arts at
the Center for Photography at Woodstock.
(02:33):
And that show is divided essentially into two parts. 1 is
a look at 7 projects of documentary arts over the last
40 years. It's called Everyday Culture.
The other exhibition is called Kinship and Community Selections
(02:53):
from the Texas African American Photography Archive.
It was curated by Nicole Fleetwood and draws from the
Texas African American Photography Archive, which I
founded in 1995 with artists Kalida Dulwood.
This archive is also part of thesubject of the Quiet Voices in a
(03:18):
Noisy World film, this show at the Center for Photography at
Woodstock. The Documentary Arts part is was
curated by Brian Wallace and includes photographs, folk art,
other kinds of materials and ephemera related to the scope of
(03:43):
the work Documentary Arts has done.
This film premiere that's happening November 14th is
itself a result of many years ofwork.
I went to Jasper, TX for the first time in 1996 and I had
heard about a black photographerwho died in the 1980s, Alonzo
(04:08):
Jordan. At that time the Texas African
American Photographer Archive ata full time archivist and was
who was working in historically black colleges in North and East
Texas. And through a Black history
professor, Wiley College, which is the oldest historically black
(04:30):
college West of the Mississippi.I learned about this
photographer. Lloyd Thompson's wife, Bertha,
was an elementary school teacherin Jasper, and she knew Missus
Jordan and he had been a consummate community
photographer and he photographedsmall town life in and around
(04:58):
Jasper, 70 mile radius for about40 years.
And after he passed, his studio was essentially left in place
because it was in the barbershop.
It was adjacent to his home. He was a Barber.
He was an elder at the church. My work on Alonzo Jordan
(05:23):
ultimately led to me getting a Guggenheim Fellowship to do the
book, an exhibition at the International Center of
Photography in New York. That was in 2011.
While doing this book, I met people in Jasper who were
starting to become more involvedin their community.
(05:47):
They were they had a close knit network to help black students
and Jasper and these little surrounding towns.
While in 1998, two years after Missus Jordan gifted the
collections Documentary Arts, there was the lynching of James
Byrd. And my work on Jasper took a
(06:12):
different direction. And by the time I was able to do
the book and exhibition with theICP in New York, so much had
come out about Jasper. But the part that was for me
missing was the photographs of Alonzo Jordan.
(06:33):
And I went to Jasper. I organized small exhibition
there in conjunction with the show in New York.
But even earlier than that, in the late 1990s, I organized this
show as an adjunctive photo festin Houston at the Community Arts
Collective. And there was a lot to be said
(06:57):
about these photographs because while Jasper was certainly a
divided place racially, there, it wasn't just an isolated
incident. And the more I looked into this,
there was, I discovered, this long history of virulent racial
violence. And when I was doing the book,
(07:20):
the person who spoke most openlyabout this was the District
Attorney who had prosecuted these cases.
And it was one of the first times in Texas, if not the first
time, when anyone who is white was given the death penalty for
killing someone who is black. For those people that are not
(07:43):
familiar with the the famous incident, can you tell us about
what occurred there? Well, there was an African
American in Jasper who was knownaround town.
I mean, Jasper's at that point probably had a population of
(08:03):
8000 people. And he was picked up by three
white guys in a pickup truck whoknew, who knew who he was, and
they were drinking. They brought him out to this
Country Rd. it's called Huff Creek Rd.
And they pulled into a little area off the road and they
(08:28):
chained him to the back of this pickup truck and then they
dragged him up the country Rd. until he was be headed,
dismembered and slaughtered and they were eventually caught.
This was a incident that attracted international
attention. It was intense trauma for the
(08:51):
community of Jasper, as one can only expect and understand.
But the depths of that Brahma resonated in a in a way that for
me is a model of what needs to happen in America as we are now
(09:13):
under the siege of this movementfor political motivated erasure,
particularly of African Americanhistory and life culture.
What do you mean by that exactly?
The erasure. Of history, well, well, the way
in which Texas is now leading the charge with Florida among
(09:38):
other States, and limiting the discussions of slavery, African
American life. Slavery has been, you know,
called involuntary dislocation. And some books, there are people
who are in this mindset that theonly parts of African American
(10:08):
history that are worth telling don't relate to racial violence.
And that's a problem. These are people who, like
Holocaust deniers, do not want to accept the grim reality of
history. But if we do not accept this and
(10:33):
act upon it, then this imagery and these descriptions will not
only be lost, but our society will be, from my point of view,
inevitably played by a critical dilemma.
And that's where we are at the present time.
(10:54):
You mentioned the term of community photographer.
Is this something that most communities have?
And what exactly does a community photographer do?
When I first started documentingAfrican American photography in
Texas, it was by necessity in mymind.
(11:18):
I had received the Commission from the Dallas Museum of Art in
1984 to do a book called Living Texas Blues.
That's the series of three shortfilms about Texas Blues and an
anthology of recordings. And this was commissioned as
(11:39):
part of an exhibition called Lone Star Regionalism, which
looked at regionalist Texas painters who rose to national
prominence in the 1930s. The idea, the concept for Living
Texas Blues was to show how there was a parallel growth of
(12:02):
regional culture and the development of Blues in Texas,
which was also beginning to assert its influence on the
national scene. When doing that book, I was
looking for the work of Black photographers and it was a 2
(12:23):
volume history of Black photography that was being
published by Texas Monthly Press.
And when I talked to the two curators who were certainly
prominent, they said that their charge only gave them enough
time and funding to look at existing collections.
And there were no black photographers in their books
(12:44):
because they could not identify.And at that time they were in an
existing collection. So for me, I wanted to know
more. I began looking through business
directories, black business directories, and found the phone
numbers of photographers who while these directories may have
(13:06):
been from the 1940s, they were still have the same phone
number. And I began to document a
generation, more than one generation of African American
photographers who were then in their 70s and 80s.
And that led to exhibitions through documentary arts.
And it led to two books, one that I did what's called The
(13:31):
Early Years of Rhythm and Blues on the Houston photographer
Benny Joseph. The next one was called
Portraits of Community African American Photography in Texas.
And it was a series of oral histories that I did with these
photographers who donated their collections to this nonprofit
(13:51):
archive. And then the third was the book
Jasper, TX and the community photographs of Alonzo Jordan.
The idea of community photography is understanding the
role that these photographers, they weren't in every community,
(14:12):
but they were all, you know, throughout different areas of
Texas because there was a large African American population.
And a lot of. The archive traces the lineage
of and the influence of a Black East Texas photographer, AC
(14:33):
Teal, who started his first studio in Houston in 1910 and a
school for black photographers with his wife, Eleanor Teal in
1942. Most of the photographs in our
archive relate to AC Teal and his students.
Alonzo Jordan was someone thoughthat was self-taught and he
(14:57):
served this large geographic area in addition to working as a
Barber. He understood the need of his
community in the way in which photographs can bolster self
esteem and to affirm the dignityof his community.
(15:18):
In the same way that you go and look for these authentic
photographs, it seems like it inthis movie and other films I've
seen of yours, you also look forlesser known authentic music.
Can you tell us a little bit about some of the music that you
(15:39):
feature and what the connection is?
When I first, like many of my projects, when I first started
this work on black photography, I just wasn't thinking making a
movie. I was thinking about documenting
the photographers, bringing themto a bigger their work to a
(16:04):
bigger audience, and the projectevolved.
For me, the turning point for making this a movie began.
After the exhibition that was atthe International Center of
(16:26):
Photography. I was contacted by an alumni
association of the JH Rowe High Schools in Jasper and they
wanted to purchase 300 copies ofmy book, which they did and
(16:46):
which they sent to members. An alumni of that school over
the decades that it existed around the country.
And while Documentary Arts was only able to document because of
the condition of the collections, when we got them,
about 5% of the people in these photographs, they sent back a
(17:11):
spreadsheet with 95% identified.And they were beginning to
enlarge their activities and to find ways within their community
to overcome the trauma of the James Byrd lynching and to help
restore the self esteem of the people who live and work there.
(17:39):
And so I began talking a lot to one of the people who's the main
figure in the film. His name's George Adams, and he
was in the industrial engineer. He was retired and he was a
designer and done a lot of different kinds of work and had
been both in in the military, but also worked in the corporate
(18:02):
world. And he retired, and he still had
family property and Jasper and wanted to do more with Jasper.
And he reconnected and continuedhis associations with people who
went to the segregated school. And so the movie really focuses
(18:24):
on this group of volunteers and most of whom are now in their
70s and 80s, and what they're doing on a local level to
restore and reclaim their own history and to help African
Americans and hopefully the population at large to heal from
(18:48):
this terrible incident, but to heal not only that, but the, you
know, the awful legacy that led to that incident.
So the movie goes in different directions.
Music is very important here andwhat the real and it began to
(19:10):
coalesce. Originally I had made a series
of little short films about Jasper, but then through my
research I found recordings thatJohn Lomax had done and Jasper
in 1940. And one of the people that he
recorded that interviewed, BillyMcRae, was the paternal ancestor
(19:35):
of many of the people I was interviewing related to the
photographs and other aspects ofwhat was they were doing in
their community. And there were two people
actually that John Lomax recorded.
One was Billy McRae and another one was called.
(20:03):
I'm sorry. That's OK.
That was distracted here. And the other recordings that
John Lomax did, we're done with a man by the name of Arthur,
brother-in-law Armstrong. And then I began looking more
deeply into this period of time between 1930 and the early 1940s
(20:24):
and these amazing recordings of different types of vernacular
music and in that region that very much kind of paralleled the
kind of perimeter of where Alonzo Jordan was photographing.
I mean, he began, he was photographing in the 1940s.
(20:47):
And then with those connections,it gave a different life to
understanding that area. These recordings, while they're
known and they've been reissued on document records and they're
well known within the Library ofCongress to to some extent, but
(21:09):
they are remarkable. In addition, I had at the time,
when founding the archive with Kalina Doolin, had met Russell
Lee, who was also photographing in this region of East Texas.
So the movie interweaves these different and somewhat
(21:31):
unexpected threads that converge.
It's so interesting, you know, can I, can I ask you?
And I watched the movie and I agree with everything you're
saying about the need to preserve history and tell these
stories. It it just seems like the
country though, right now is so divided.
(21:53):
And I, and I've heard people, I guess on the other side of the
political spectrum and, you know, some of it's just
terrible. But but there are others who I,
I believe, genuinely feel that they too, are trying to preserve
history and that others are trying to tear down their
(22:14):
history. And I'm just fascinated with the
whole sense of people, no matterwhat side of somebody is on,
clinging to their version of thetruth and how important it is to
people. And I was curious like, you
know, what do you think about that?
(22:36):
What you've identified is a hugeissue, and for me, it's one of
the most pressing issues of our time because the way history is
told will shape the way people act in the present and in the
future. And the battleground for this
(22:56):
begins in early childhood education.
And what are the books that children are reading?
What's the story that they're learning about the past?
And I don't know if you're familiar with my children's
book, but my first children's book called Osceola Memories of
(23:17):
a Sharecropper's Daughter, whichwas published in 2000.
It was based on an artist's bookthat I had done about this
woman, Osceola Maze. And Osceola Maze was like many
people that I document. She became part of my work in
many different media. But this book is about Osceola,
(23:41):
who was an oral poet. She sang a cappella spirituals,
which is How I Met her through amember of her church.
I was organizing a Folk Festivaland she and Miss Raven said you
must meet Missus Mays. And Missus Mays, when she
introduced herself, she said that she it wasn't, she didn't
perform correct singing. And I asked her, what do you
(24:03):
mean by that? She said, well, it's not the way
people sing today, it's the songs I learned from Grandma
Walker, who was 10 when slavery ended.
So she preserved this style of singing from the 19th century.
And she was someone who had worked as a Navy and domestic
during her life. While the children's book got a
(24:26):
lot of attention, it won first prize in the New York Book Show
for young readers. Non fiction got a lot of
recognition and I ended up doinga film about Osceola.
In addition, she became part of a stage show called Texas in
Paris, which I was done and produced in Paris in 1989 and
(24:50):
became an Off Broadway show in 2015 and went back to Paris in
2016 with a as a show with French super titles.
By then Osceola was deceased andthe woman actress playing her
was Lilius White, Tony Award winner.
(25:13):
So in any event, the Osceola book and the Osceola Maze
project that spanned a lot of years was all about that.
It was it was a non fiction bookfor children.
It talked about slavery. These were stories.
Osceola was an oral poet. Her grandmother, who was a
(25:37):
slave, composed one poem in her life called the Civil War.
It's very powerful. Another poem was the black man's
plea for justice. And so at that point in time,
this went widely into the publicschools.
(25:57):
It became a scholastic book. In today's world, it would
probably be banned. And so the forces that be that
are, you know, serving their influence over public education.
This is not new. And, you know, for me, because I
study this period of history, I've seen this coming.
(26:21):
I mean, the United States is a divided nation.
It always has been the Revolutionary War, the with this
similar kinds of divisions, the Civil War, the McCarthy era.
So we're constantly having to stay vigilant to these issues.
(26:43):
This isn't new, and it's not in the end, the best I think anyone
can do is to act on a family level, on a, you know, public
school level, but on a communitylevel.
And that's what this movie's about for me.
This movie is about hope and howwe can do quiet things and just
(27:10):
move the narrative that we want to tell forward.
So the people in Jasper, they put up, you know, markers on the
side of the highway. They've built little museums.
Yeah, I like that. They have a scholarship fund for
black kids in these little country towns.
(27:32):
That's great. You know, I was involved in
education for many years and youknow, things go in cycles and I
don't know what the answer is because it just seems like, you
know, things go in a certain direction for a long time and a
certain part of the population is unhappy, then it goes in a
different direction and then theother population is unhappy.
(27:55):
I don't know exactly what the right thing to do is.
I agree. Everyone should be trying to get
their voice in there to represent the accurate views of
history. I think it's tough because, you
know, school is compulsory. Like, you know, you don't have a
(28:17):
choice. You have to send your kids and
parents have strong feelings about, you know, what their kids
are being indoctrinated with. But but there has to be some
system in place where people canhave the option to see your
books and your films and other people's work and think for
(28:41):
themselves and try and, you know, deal with tough issues and
think about it and come to conclusions.
And I love your work because you, you do make us feel.
You make us think. And I'm sorry, earlier when you
were rattling through all the different things you were doing
this year, I, I was just kind oflaughing in the background
(29:04):
because I was just blown away. I, I was blown away at your
productivity. How?
How do you find the energy to doso many different kinds of
projects in so many different art forms?
(29:24):
I don't have a complicated life in many respects.
Clearly I take on complicated issues, but I live rather simple
and orderly life and I walk 4 to6 miles every day.
(29:48):
I drive to my office, I listen to the same and my office is
about 7 or 8 minutes from my apartment where I live with my
wife and I have the same I listen to the same piece of
music every morning. I go walking on this.
It's kind of a nature trail. Or if it's hot, I walk through
(30:10):
the neighborhoods and I come back, have a cup of coffee and
start doing what I do. I have one with my wife who
believed to Doolin, who's an artist.
And we have a little campus of buildings and a which has
historically been kind of a low income, mixed racial
neighborhood in Dallas. And we have lunch together.
(30:34):
The Billy afternoon. We have coffee together, I come
back, I write more and or work on some creative activity and I
go for another walk and I listento another piece of music, which
is John Colfrane's ballads on myway home.
My morning music is Segovia playing Astorius.
(30:57):
So I think it sets a tone to my day and it's not to say that I
found an experience different degrees of anguish during the
day dealing with the realities of day-to-day life.
But I'm also a very family oriented person.
So I have two wonderful children.
I now have 4 grandchildren. And I keep looking in the mirror
(31:20):
and saying I don't know, am I really old enough for this?
Because the part of me that creates every day is to kid in
me and I have this the joy that I had when I was growing up.
And so the work that I make goesin a lot of different places.
(31:43):
I used to joke with my friends that my work was and lesser
known places everywhere. Man, I, I, I love the structure
of your day and we'll have to goback to that again sometime.
I don't know if you've written about it, but I think a lot of
us could learn from that. The music, the coffee, the, the
(32:03):
time with a significant other person, some nature walks and
some work that you enjoy. That sounds like the perfect
combination. It is, you know, I.
I like that, but everyone's a little bit different.
You know, I'm, I'm not prescriptive.
Everyone has to find that. And, and my novel come Round
(32:27):
right is in part about that. It's not the specifics of what I
do now, but it's how do we come to terms with our life?
How do we overcome trauma? How do we we all experience
trauma in different degrees, in different ways.
(32:47):
It's finding it's a way to go deeper into ourselves.
And because I think that the most beneficial outcome is
internal and I want both my wifeand I.
(33:10):
She's an artist and she just hada big show opening in here at
Darren Clearly Gallery and we'reboth going strong.
We have no intent to retire. And so for us, the joy is in the
making. Well, the film we were speaking
about for most of our discussionis Quiet Voices in a Noisy
(33:31):
World, The Struggle for Change in Jasper, TX.
Allen, just tell our listeners one more time, where can they
see this film and some of the other things that you were
talking about earlier? Quiet Voices in a Noisy World
opens November 14th at Cinema Village near Union Square,
(33:55):
Greenwich Village in New York City.
Alongside Quiet Voices in the Noisy World are 12 other films
of mine. There's one program that's for
short films that I made beginning with my first film
that's screened in New York called Stoney Knows How.
That premiered in 1981 to the present.
(34:19):
Then there are other features ofmine that have been released
over the last several years and they focus on a variety of
subjects. There's a one film is called The
Beat Hotel that was shot about the legendary dwelling of the
American Beats in Paris between the years 1951 and 57.
(34:44):
Excuse Me in 1961 is a film of mine called Master Qi and the
Monkey King that was shot in NewYork City.
It's a Chinese language film. It's about a Chinese opera
company that was started by Qixufang in New York City, and
it's an extraordinary story. But the film is entirely in
(35:06):
Chinese, and I worked with the Chinese community and with
translators. It was a great challenge, but
that film screened for seven years on Netflix and attracted a
wide audience. Another film of mine I think
that has great contemporary relevance is called The Devil's
Swing. The Devil's Swing is a movie
(35:29):
about a region of the Texas Mexico border called La Junta de
Los Rios and made this film in the 1990s.
And it was at that time about this little area, this small
border crossing where one could pay a Mexican man a dollar and
(35:49):
he would row you from Texas to Mexico.
It was completely legal. People on both sides of the
border were related. Not only did they transport
goods like lumber or refrigerator on the Texas side,
a woman, Lucia Rede Madrid, whose family had one of the
(36:10):
original land grants to this area in the 1918 thirties and
had operated a general store that she turned into a lending
library. And she was written up in
National Geographic as having the largest private lending
library in the world. And these books were ferried
(36:31):
across the river. It wasn't.
It was an area that was totally is still, but it was even more
so remote. It's the point.
It's where the Rio Conscious joins the Rio Grande to create a
small Oasis. It's where Cabeza Tavaca crossed
(36:54):
from Mexico and to Texas and to New Mexico.
It's an apocryphal spot in the world, and in the 90s, this
continued to exist. But the movie is about I should
It was made over a period of five years, and it ends with the
tragic killing of a Mexican American boy on the Texas side
(37:17):
of the border. He was hurting his goats, had a
World War One carbine rifle fendoff snakes and a Marine in a
Gilly suit shot him at 200 yardshis straight A student.
And when they went to his bedroom, they discovered that on
the wall was a poster because hewanted to become a Marine.
(37:42):
It was the beginning of the militarization of the border.
Another film of mine that's showing is called Serving Second
Chances, which is about homelessness.
It follows 3 homeless people over a period of three years.
So I hope everyone will go to the Cinema Village site and
(38:02):
check it out. There's screenings five times a
day, and it's the biggest presentation of my movies ever
in New York City. That's incredible and I wanted
to really highly recommend that people go and support it.
Alan, it was so great speaking to you again as usual, and I
wish you the best with this and all the projects that you're
(38:24):
working on. And we'll have to touch base
again with your next project. So thanks again for coming on
the program and I'll talk to youagain in the future.
OK. Thank you a lot, Tom.
I really appreciate it.
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