PROJECT NEWS
JANUARY 2008:
Gode spoke to two
groups of students at Attleboro High School about the American lynching
phenomenon on January 8, 2008. One teacher called Gode a 'gifted
storyteller.' The events were sponsored by the Attleboro Cultural
Council.
On January 21-23 2008, Gode
executed a complex and exciting itinerary at Beloit College in Beloit,
Wisconsin. Beloit is Wisconsin’s oldest college, established in 1846.
Highlights included a multicultural conversation about the lynching
phenomenon, lynching-topic-related lectures and discussions with students
and faculty convened for international politics, social justice, political
thinking, a public lecture entitled American Lynching held in the
college’s Richardson Auditorium, and on the second day of his visit
additional appearances with students and faculty convened for international
relations of Latin America, race theory, and slavery and abolition.
“Mr. Davis came to Beloit
College and was a very pleasant surprise in his appearances here. His
riveting and appropriately disturbing documentary will be a must encounter
for anyone serious about eradicating injustice in the 21st
Century. The images coupled with Mr. Davis’s compelling narratives and
discussions brought the evil of lynching up close and personal.”
Dr. Debra Majeed
Associate Professor & Chair
Department of Philosophy &Religious Studies
Beloit College
Beloit, WI
You can see Gode's full
itinerary here.
You can watch a video of Gode's
presentation here::
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JUNE 2007:
MOB KILLS PASSENGER IN CAR
THAT HIT CHILD
By Liz Austin Peterson
Associated Press
Austin, Texas- Watching her battered brother lay on the pavement outside her
home, struggling to breathe as he choked on his own blood, Margaret Morales
couldn’t fathom why someone would beat him so badly.
It’s a
question police were still trying to answer Wednesday, a day after an
outraged mob kicked and punched David Morales to death as he tried to defend
a friend whose car had apparently hit and injured a child.
Hundreds of people who had attended a city-sponsored Juneteenth festival had
spilled into the public housing complex’s parking lot for an informal
after-party shortly before the beating began, neighbors said.
The
driver was confronted by several people when he got out of the car to check
on the 3- or 4-year-old child, Austin Police Commander Harold Piatt said.
When they attacked the driver, Morales got out of the car to protect him and
was attacked as well. Police said no guns or knives were used.
Piatt
said the mob may have been as many as 20 people. The driver got away and is
cooperating with investigators, who are not releasing his name.
Margaret Morales said a young boy came to her door to tell her that her
brother was lying on the ground outside. She found him sprawled on the
pavement 100 feet from her townhouse, gasping for air.
Her
sister and mother came running after hearing her screams, but police
wouldn’t let any of them get close to him.
On
Wednesday, the lawn outside Margaret Morales’ three-bedroom townhouse in
east Austin was littered with potato chip bags and plastic foam cups that
partygoers had left behind. She sat with her sister, Elizabeth, on her porch
watching her 13-year-old son sob in the arms of two friends.
“I
just want the people caught and brought to justice,” Elizabeth Morales said.
“I want them to feel the same pain that they caused my brother.”
Margaret Morales said her brother, who was staying with her, was a painter
who was on his way home from work. The driver, whom she knew only as Victor,
picked him up and dropped him off every day, she said.
Police
arrived one minute after receiving a 911 call, by which time the beating had
stopped, department spokeswoman Toni Chovanetz said. But the Morales family
complained that medical help was slow in coming.
David
Morales arrived at the hospital about 35 minutes after the 911 call was
received, said Warren Hassinger, Austin-Travis County Emergency Services
spokesman.
Emergency officials said police ordered them to wait until the area was
secure.
A
preliminary autopsy listed blunt force trauma as the cause of death.
Commentary
By Gode Davis
In a
second shorter piece written by the AP reporter Liz Peterson, several
other details of this lynching-like tragedy emerged. The victim’s full name
was David Rivas Morales. Morales, 40, was riding in a car that entered an
apartment complex parking lot on Tuesday June 19, 2007 and struck
two-year-old Michael Hosea, Jr. police said. The boy was taken to a hospital
with non-life-threatening injuries.
Peterson also writes of “conflicting accounts” of how many people were in
the area. Police originally estimated 2,000 to 3,000 and a woman who lives
at the complex said hundreds who had been at a Juneteenth festival filled
the parking lot and street. Only later, in retrospect, did the number of
perpetrators involved in bashing Mr. Morales to death get “officially”
reduced to “four or five persons.”
Of
course the public relations specialist quoted by Peterson’s news reports, a
police spokeswoman named Toni Chovanetz, also downplayed any connection to
the nearby city-sponsored festival for Juneteenth, which commemorates Texas
African-American slaves getting the word of their Federal emancipation on
June 19, 1865 – and Mr. Morales’s lynching-like death.
Nationally, the coverage was yet more minimal. I noticed a one sentence
news leader blurb at the bottom of CNN unrelated coverage, and nowhere was
the “L” word mentioned. Our corporate-driven media would be loathe to use
the word “lynching” to describe an actual American murder by mob unless such
a tragic event transpired on the White House lawn, and occurred to a young
black man – and maybe not even then. In 1998, a sensational dragging death
of a black man and a beating death of a gay man garnered frequent mention of
the “L” word, but because in each case it could be proved that only two
perpetrators had committed the act, then the convenient euphemism “hate
crime” could more generally and correctly be applied to our selective
American conversation. Was this 2007 event a lynching? You be the judge.
Gode
Davis
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MAY 2007:
On May 4, 2007, Gode Davis returned to Attleboro High School in
Massachusetts to reprise his workshop entitled The Lynching-Bullying
Connection. The event went extremely well and was very well attended. Many
insightful questions were posed proving that this topic remains provocative
for high school as well as college age and adult audiences.
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MARCH 2007:
Click here to read Gode Davis' eulogy for Juan
Bonilla Flores, whose father was killed in the 1918 mass lynching that came
to be known as The Porvenir Massacre.
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January 2007:
Click here to read Gode Davis' eulogy for Dr. H.
James Cameron, lynching survivor and founder of America's Black Holocaust
Museum.
In February, Gode will screen the American Lynching film trailer as part of the University of
Rhode Island's STRANGE FRUIT: An Exhibit on Lynching and Hate Crimes.
URI Providence Campus
80 Washington St Providence RI
STRANGE FRUIT: An Exhibit on Lynching and Hate Crimes January 16 through February 23,
2007 with performance and discussion February 2 at 11 am, and February 7 and
20 at 7pm.
The URI Providence Campus Gallery will explore in art, images and words the
history of lynching and hate crimes locally, nationally, and internationally.
The exhibit will feature artwork, photographs, and news clippings from the
collections of documentary filmmaker Gode Davis,
and artists Bob Dilworth, Ken Gonzales-Day, and Reuven Wallack, along with a
special performance created by the Everett Dance Theatre. The
performances will be held on Feb 2 at 11am and Feb 7 & 20 at 7pm,
followed by a talk by Mr. Davis and a public forum with Q&A led by
professionals in the field as an opportunity for dialogue.
Gallery Hours: M-Th 9-9, F&S 9-4 (closed Sunday) For information: 277-5206
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December 2006:
On December 15,
Gode Davis presented his workshop entitled The Lynching-Bullying Connection
at Attleboro High School in Attleboro, MA. The 40-45 students and
teachers in attendance screened the 2003 work-in-progress DVD of American
Lynching: A Documentary Feature, followed by a lecture and discussion. The
event was very well-received.
To inquire about scheduling a lecture or workshop with Gode Davis,
please contact him via
Gode@AmericanLynching.com
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November 2005:
Gode Davis presented a workshop entitled The Lynching-Bullying Connection as
part of a conference held at Rhode Island College on November 5. This
inaugural event was well attended and successfully linked the practice of
extreme bullying to the phenomenon of lynching in America. Extreme bullying
occurs in schools and other public settings and victimizes students and
children designated as “The Other” by hateful clusters of people or
loose-knit groups. Lynching targeted marginalized persons in a similar way
through the vehicle of lynch mobs.
Gode will next travel to Arizona State University to discuss the ongoing
film project and the sordid history of the lynching phenomenon. Arturo Rosales, author of ¡Pobles Rasa!, a
pioneering study of violence against Mexican Americans, will also present. This event,
scheduled for November 17, is sponsored by the ASU Departments of History,
African & African American Studies, and Chicana & Chicano Studies; the
Center for Latin America Studies; and the School for Social Justice & Social
Inquiry.
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August 2005:
Click here to read the revised treatment for AMERICAN
LYNCHING.
Our
grassroots fundraising campaign is off to a promising start. We are
sincerely grateful to those of you who have pledged support. However,
help is still needed if this project is to succeed. To learn more
about how you can contribute to American Lynching, click here.
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June
2005: AMERICAN
LYNCHING director and co-producer Gode Davis was in Washington
D.C. on Monday, June 13, 2005 to film events surrounding Senate
resolution 39, a so-called “lynching apology” intended as a belated
atonement for victims of lynchings and their descendants. Co-sponsored
by Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-LA) and Sen. George Allen (R-VA),
Gode was invited to the ceremonious series of events by Senator Landrieu. He
witnessed a presentation by the eloquent James Allen,
known for his illustrated book about lynchings in America called
Without Sanctuary (and its associated website) and also a press
conference highlighted by a stirring account delivered by H. James
Cameron, the 91-year-old gentleman known for surviving a lynch mob’s
wrath on August 7, 1930 in Marion Indiana. (Mr. Cameron isd in the visitor’s gallery of the U.S.
Senate when the historic resolution was actuallre
as strictly symbolic.
Read
Senator Landrieu's letter here
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September
2004: Gode Davis
and the American Lynching project are the subject of a feature-length
article in the October issue of Rhode Island Monthly magazine.
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February
2004: The
Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History in Detroit has
contacted us about a possible screening of American Lynching in
conjunction with their upcoming lynching exhibit commencing in July 2004 and
extending into 2005. If our film is accepted for screening, the museum,
largest of its kind in the United States, is expected to assist us in
obtaining completion funding.
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January
2004: Our
team is pleased to announce the addition of Minneapolis-based filmmaker
Craig Rice, current executive director of the Minnesota Film & TV Board,
as our first Executive Producer. (See our Personnel section for details!)
Great
news! We learned on January 26, 2004 that American Lynching has been
selected as a semifinalist and will move forward to the NBPC (National Black
Programming Consortium) final panel for funding consideration. Results will
be announced by March 31st.
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October
2003: Our
participation in the prestigious No Borders section of the 25th
Annual Independent Film Project (IFP) Market is now history. Although open
only to the film and television industry and a few guests, two screenings of
American Lynching’s latest work-in-progress tape went off without a
hitch. Co-producers James M. Fortier and Gode Davis attended a plethora of
meetings with potential buyers and interested parties with a goal of
securing adequate completion funds. Reaction to our screening trailer seemed
quite positive, with frequent allusions to the scope, merit, and originality
of our work. As a consequence of feedback received at the IFP Market, we
have decided to alter the title of our documentary feature to simply American
Lynching – eliminating any confusing subtitled information.
October
15, 2003 – We learned today that our project has officially advanced to
Phase III Review of the Independent Television Service (ITVS) Open Call for
Autumn 2003 (Round 2). This is an enormous competitive achievement, placing American
Lynching into an elite field of independent film hopefuls seeking a
coveted co-production relationship with ITVS. Based in San Francisco, ITVS
is funded entirely by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington,
D.C. Only about a dozen new films receive completion funding from ITVS
– out of nearly 2000 applications considered annually.
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September
2003: Most of
this month has been spent preparing for our participation in the No Borders
section of the IFP Co-Production Market in NYC, a hectic process leading us
forward. Screenings of our latest WIP tape are scheduled for Monday, the 22nd
at 1:30 p.m. and Thursday the 25th at 11 a.m. in Theatre 4 of the
Angelika complex. On to SoHo!
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August 2003:
Our August
17-19, 2003 filming trip to Coatesville, Pennsylvania was successful despite
a breakdown of Gode Davis’s personal car. It was the water pump, and
something a bit reptilian called a serpentine belt. A rental car
fortuitously acquired on a Sunday night at the local airport near Newburgh,
New York transported Mr. Davis and Associate Producer Alf Wilson to the
appointed motel where they joined DP-Co-Producer James M. Fortier and
crewmembers Brian Dilg and Fred Cerniglia after an arduous five-hour
late-night drive.
The
interviews were quite fascinating. On Monday, the 18th our camera
focused on author and scholar Dennis Downey, a professor of history at
nearby Millersville University. His insights about lynch mobs in general,
and about the lynching by burning of black steel mill laborer Zachariah
Walker on August 13, 1911 in particular – proved most germane. On Monday
evening, we shot B-roll of the precise site where Walker was burned and a
mob of 5,000 had gathered to partake of the grisly spectacle. Tuesday’s
interviews featured 99-year-old Irene Downs, a wise ancient woman who had
actually known lynching victim Walker during that fateful summer so long
ago, and Lark Worth, the granddaughter of the magnate whose steel mill had
been at the crux of it all.
On
August 30, we received word that American Lynching: Strange And Bitter Fruit
had once again made it to the Second Round of the ITVS Open Call competition
for Autumn 2003, as we had in the Spring Open Call – only to lose then in
the Third Round just prior to actual Co-Production funding. We sent out our
latest version of our WIP (work-in-progress) tape soon thereafter, putting
our “best foot forward” – this time hoping for better results from the
ITVS committee of dedicated readers.
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July/August 2003:
Editor and second writer Mike Yearling and Co-Producer and Director Gode
Davis have been busy assembling a revised Work-In-Progress tape at Mike's
Ohio domain. The new tape will run a bit over 13 minutes in length and
will feature more original footage and interviews shot by Co-Producer and
Director of Photography James M. Fortier.
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July 2003:
Notification was received on July 24, 2003 that our film, American Lynching:
Strange and Bitter Fruit, had been selected for IFP/New York's eighth annual
No Borders International Co-Production Market, taking place in New York
City. No Borders, a section of the 25th annual IFP Market running from
September 21st to September 26th, accepts an elite field of 35 projects from
around the world, of which only 13 are documentaries. Additionally, as
a Work-In-Progress in the IFP Market, we will have a 25-minute slot to
present a portion of our project as a preview screening. The IFP
Market, attended by 2,000, is the only selective film market in the United
States that is focused on presenting film works in development exclusively
to industry professionals. IFP is an acronym for Independent Film
Project. Its members consist of peers engaged in the profession
of independent filmmaking.
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June/July 2003:
American Lynching Co-Producer Gode Davis traveled to
Springfield, Missouri on a low-key research trip to see what he could learn
about the death of 27-year-old Leonard Gakinya. Gakinya, a Kenyan
immigrant, was found hanging from a microwave communications tower on the
morning of October 2, 2002. On the day his body was found, authorities
labeled Gakinya's death a "clear-cut" suicide -- but
inconsistencies about the case remain troubling.
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June 2003:
Michael DiBenedetto is back as
a PA for the third consecutive summer!
The return of the diligent DiBenedetto is much-appreciated.
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March/April 2003:
With the addition of regional Emmy-nominated Production Advisor Lorraine Norrgard
the new and exciting team to complete production of American
Lynching: Strange And Bitter Fruit is fast taking shape. Please visit
our revised Personnel page to keep track of recent changes. In other project
news, Gode Davis and Mike Yearling have been hard at work creating a new
work-in-progress (WIP) trailer that will provide interested parties with
a better idea of how the film's original vision is evolving.
The working script
is also being rewritten to reflect some of this new direction.
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March 2003:
Saint Patrick's Day meant more than
"the luck of the Irish" to supporters
of American Lynching. After making application to San Francisco-based
ITVS (Independent Television Service) - perhaps the world's leading
funding agency for providing broadcast opportunities to independent film
projects, we learned that we had been selected for Phase II Review in
the ITVS Open Call process - beating out
several hundred other outstanding proposed
film packages from around the world. To achieve this exciting milestone
in the prestigious semi-annual event, our application had to be top
notch. (You can view the narrative portion of our so far successful application
just by clicking HERE.)
In addition, if you'd like to know more about
ITVS, here's their link.
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February 2003:
American
Lynching: Strange And Bitter Fruit has been "greenlighted"
by PBS! In conjunction with a more enthusiastic level of support
for our in-progress documentary film project, the factual programming
office of the network has issued a new and more enthusiastic letter
of support than anything previously received.
read the PBS letter here
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July/August
2002: The
first major shooting (filming) trip for American Lynching began in
late July and extended well into August. Filmmaker Gode Davis and a crew of
three -- Director of Photography James M. Fortier, James Borrego, and Kaye
Charles Cruz (the latter two men conveniently based in San Antonio, Texas)-- traveled to various
“lynching-related” destinations in Texas and Oklahoma in hopes of
meeting Mr. Davis’s pre-arranged objectives. Among those interviewed were
106-year-old Hobart Carter in Wortham, Texas, 93-year-old Nannette Hutchison
in Waco, Texas, 82-year-old DeArman Fields “Pat” Ratliff in Lone Grove,
Oklahoma, and Juan Bonilla Flores, age 97, in both Odessa and Porvenir,
Texas—the latter destination reachable only by off road vehicles and
situated in the upper Big Bend region of Presidio County right on the Rio
Grande with Mexico in plain sight.
