By Celeste A. Bateman
When journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones faced pushback about her much-debated 1619 Project, a commissioned work she spearheaded for The New York Times, she recently said, “The fight over the 1619 Project is not about history. It is about memory. I’ve always said that the 1619 Project is not history. It is a work of journalism that explicitly seeks to challenge … the national memory. The project has always been as much about the present as it is the past.”
Over the past few years, telling our own stories has been a recurring theme, resounding particularly among people of color. There has been a cosmic shift in the way we view ourselves and the way people view each other.
Filmmaker, Celeste Bateman at the premiere of her documentary Gone Too Soon: The Life, Legacy and Loss of Newark’s Cultural Icons.
I’m speaking primarily about America, but my guess is that the movement is global. Here in America, the convergence of the pandemic and the much-televised murder of George Floyd, caused many of us to pause, forcing us to reassess how we are viewed by other racial groups and portrayed in the media. it seems more pertinent now than ever for us to document our own stories.
We can no longer leave to chance how our stories are told. We’ve seen on numerous recent occasions, how individuals, some with malintent others out of ignorance, attempt to rewrite American history. As a result, critical race theory emerged as a topic of contention in Texas and quickly spread around the country as folks grapple with how America’s shameful history of enslavement should, or should not be taught in the country’s schools.
Speaking our truth and telling our own stories is not without controversy, particularly as Black folk raise their voices and fight against our subjugation. Why does the dominating race think that only their story should be told? Members of my baby boomer generation can attest that in grade school most of our Black representation was relegated to two subjects: slavery and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Here in New Jersey, the Jewish community fought, with the support of others, to have the history of the Holocaust integrated into the curriculum, which manifested in the New Jersey Holocaust Education Mandate of 1994 under Gov. Christine Todd Whitman. The Amistad Law, designed to ensure that African American history is taught in the state’s schools, got off to a sleepy start since its passing in 2002, but now seems to be gaining traction under Gov. Phil Murphy.
I could not have been more excited to learn that former San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick, denigrated by the NFL and others for demonstrating his truth and by “taking a knee,” will have his story told by the master storyteller herself (and my idol), filmmaker Ava DuVernay.
The series entitled Colin in Black & White will stream on Netflix in six parts. This brings me to my film, a documentary called Gone Too Soon: The Life, Legacy and Loss of Newark’s Cultural Icons. It premiered at The Newark Public Library on October 9 to a large audience of friends, funders, and community members.
Gone Too Soon: The Life, Legacy and Loss of Newark’s Cultural Icons chronicles the lives of 11 movers and shakers who passed away within 15 years, leaving a void in Newark's cultural landscape.
The film chronicles the lives of 11 cultural movers and shakers who passed away within 15 years, leaving a void in the cultural landscape of my hometown, Newark. They are former WBGO Jazz-88 President and CEO Cephas Bowles, Poet/Playwright/ Activist Amiri Baraka, poets Breya “Blkbrry Molassez” Knight and Halim Suliman; Actor/Director/Arts Administrator Rodney Gilbert, Historians Dr. Clement Alexander Price, Charles F. Cummings and Dr. Robert Curvin, Artists Russell A. Murray and Jerry Gant and theater producer Kabu Okai-Davies.
That void is being filled by a new crop of extremely talented artists and storytellers. This film, like the 1619 Project, is as much about the present as it is the past. It is not so much a story about 11 dead people, but a story about 11 people who lived. We combined their life stories, with oral testimonies, historic footage, photographs, music, narration, and color portraits to paint a picture of extraordinary beings who paved the way for those who have since either migrated to or grew up in the city.
I was inspired by many things in creating this piece, particularly the re-writing of Newark’s cultural history that was happening right in front of me. Without delving too deeply, I wanted people to know on whose shoulders we as promulgators and creators in the community stand.
I was equally inspired by the great Dr. Maya Angelou’s poem “When Great Trees Fall” in which she writes, “When great souls die after a period, peace blooms… space fills with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”
Celeste A. Bateman is an arts advocate and the producer and director of the documentary “Gone Too Soon: The Life, Legacy and Loss of Newark’s Cultural Icons.”
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