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“This Film Is a Rebellion!”: Filmmaker, Actor, <em>Black Journal</em> Producer, and Political Activist William Greaves (1926–2014)

2015; Indiana University Press; Volume: 6; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2979/blackcamera.6.2.7

1947-4237

Griffis,

Film in Education and Therapy

“This Film Is a Rebellion!”:Filmmaker, Actor, Black Journal Producer, and Political Activist William Greaves (1926–2014) Noelle Griffis (bio) “Films from a black perspective are films that are more in the order of weapons in the struggle for freedom, for equality, for liberation and self-expression, and for all those human rights, if you will. They tend to agitate in the tradition of Frederick Douglass.” —William Greaves1 “I am Furious Black,” wrote Harlem-born actor, filmmaker, and activist William Greaves (1926–2014) in a New York Times op-ed that ran in the summer of 1970.2 For Greaves (fig. 1), this frustration stemmed not from the racist stereotype of the “angry black man,” but as the only reasonable response to an irrational, “sick” society. Echoing Marxist philosopher and “father of the New Left” Herbert Marcuse, Greaves explained, “America is caught in the grip of myriad neurotic and psychotic trends. Call these trends racism, sexism, chauvinism, militarism, sadism, what you will. The fact remains that it is virtually impossible to develop the necessary number of psychiatrists, psychologists, analysts, therapists and the like to cope with America’s emotionally disturbed population.” Vietnam, environmental degradation, and a nation’s history defined by racism created this tragic situation and carried the seeds of total destruction, according to Greaves. The solution: television. Greaves proposed that socially conscious programming produced through black control of “the most powerful medium of communication ever devised by man” could halt this devolution. Television, in the right hands, would provide the means for a Marxian reversal of power and a reeducation of the ruling class (defined first and foremost by race), potentially bringing the country to mental healthfulness. Greaves writes, “For the Black producer, television will be just another word for jazz. And jazz for the Afro-American has been a means of liberating the human spirit.”3 Greaves’s 1970 op-ed offered a compelling alternative vision to Gil Scott-Heron’s spoken-word recording “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” [End Page 7] which made its first appearance that same year.4 While Scott-Heron riffed on the superficiality and racial bias of commercial television (“The revolution will not be right back after a message/About a white tornado, white lightning, or white people”), Greaves imagined television as the very site of revolution. Of course, he included a caveat that any real change through television would require the impossible: “an inversion of the education to entertainment ratio.”5 Yet rather than pure idealism, Greaves’s proposal for a black-led media society actually served as a creative way to deliver a biting critique of the failures of a white supremacist society. Still, Greaves’s utopic vision of black media control seemed slightly less impossible at the time of his writing than it would have just a few short years before, and Greaves was already at the forefront of a new movement. In 1968, Greaves became the co-host of Black Journal, the first nationally televised news program geared exclusively toward the issues of Black America. Produced by National Education Television (NET, the forerunner of PBS), Black Journal reached the widest audience of any black-oriented nonfiction program. It was, in addition, one of several African American programs created in the wake of the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination and the publication of the Johnson administration’s National Advisory Report on Civil Disorders (the “Kerner Commission Report”) in 1968, which faulted the solely white perspective of the mainstream media for contributing to the growing “separate and unequal” racial divide in the United States. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. William Greaves with his Emmy, awarded for the 1969 season of Black Journal. Courtesy of the Black Film Center/Archive, with permission from Louise Greaves. [End Page 8] Although most of Black Journal’s production team was African American, a white producer, Alvin Perlmutter, remained in charge until the crew, which included filmmakers St. Clair Bourne and Madeline Anderson, staged a walk-out to demand black control at the top-level.6 Otherwise, they claimed, the show was falsely promoting itself as “by, for, and of the black community.” Greaves emerged as the...