Screening Set for Atlanta January 16

Before the Memories Fade: Voices from the Civil Rights Movement, will begin it's 2013 screening tour Wednesday January 16th in Atlanta. The 107 minute documentary will be shown at the Plaza Theatre, with the start time set for 7pm.

Photo: Director Keith B. Plummer and Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton after the Washington, D.C. premier.

"This story has been told 100 different ways but you found a new way to tell it. This was just wonderful! Wonderful! You found a way to capture who we were."  Rep. Eleanor Holmes Norton

National Press Club Date Scheduled

We will be holding a news conference on the film, Before the Memories Fade: Voices from the Civil Rights Movement, September 25th at noon at the National Press Club.

This will be the first national publicity for the movie. What a nice venue to begin our journey.

Personally this is a huge event for me considering the 18 plus years I spent covering various news conferences as a cameraman for a Washington D.C. news bureau.

It will be different being on the other side of those cameras and microphones while being the focus of the national news media.

I'm looking forward to it.

Fox 5 TV Appearance Lined Up

I am scheduled to appear on the Fox 5 Morning Show on September 26th with host Allison Seymour. It will be great to get the word out about the movie and have fun with some of my old D.C. news friends.

My segment is scheduled to go on at 9:15 so set your recorders if you can't watch it live.

Projection Tests

We're on countdown. 14 business days until the Premier screening. Here testing the Blu Ray projection on the wall. It's always very interesting to see your hard work so large in scale after looking at it for years on an editing monitor or 50 inch plasma.

We have a few more checks but it's looking good. Can't wait to hear what you think.

Premier Screening in D.C. Sept. 27th

We are happy to announce the Premier Screening of Before the Memories Fade: Voices from the Civil Rights Movement, on September 27, 2012, in Washington, DC.  The documentary feature film will screen at 8:00 pm at the newly remodeled Avalon Theatre, 5505 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Washington, DC 20015.

After the screening there will be an opportunity for Q&A with the director and several of the movie and movement participants.

Running Time: 1 hour and 47 minutes
Suggested age: 13 years and older

Director: Keith B. Plummer
Plumgood Productions

Before The Memories Fade: William T. Coleman

It was a rainy morning in Lexington, Kentucky, on April 8, but the sun shone long enough for me to have a great shoot with the Honorable William T. Coleman, Jr., Esq. Mr. Coleman was in town this past Thursday to speak at the University of Kentucky College of Law.

For those of you who have never heard of Mr. Coleman, let's just say his work had a hand in some some really big legal aspects of the movement. Mr. Coleman worked closely with Thurgood Marshall on many cases, including as one of the lead strategists and coauthor of the legal brief in Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Brown was one of the landmark civil rights cases dealing with racial segregation in which the U.S. Supreme Court held racial segregation in public schools to be unconstitutional.

Mr. Coleman shared some very interesting stories of his life and his time in the movement. His stories were intriguing and after hearing his personal insights, I couldn't help but leave the interview questioning the truth of some of what we were taught about situations that occurred in American history.

For more on William T. Coleman: www.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Thaddeus_Coleman,_Jr.

Before the Memories Fade: Stoney Cooks

I had a very interesting talk with Mr. Cooks on October 9th in Washington, D.C. We talked about what led him to join the movement and travel down south while he was enrolled in college in Indiana. He told me that while driving in the south they decided to stop for food: "We should have known better but it all worked out."

A lot of the interview revolved around the strategic side of the protests, marches, and sit-ins. Mr. Cooks really wanted to get across that events were strategized and planned. "We didn't just get arrested to get arrested. Everyone couldn't get arrested at the same time. Someone had to keep track of who got arrested and where they were. We also needed to be able to continue the protests."

One note that I have to leave you with comes from the pre-interview conversation Mr. Cooks and I had about Rosa Parks. While talking about researching the movement, Mr. Cooks stated that the internet is great but people often stop at the little snippets they read on wikipedia and usually don't dig further. For example, he commented: "The biggest miscarriage of justice to sister Rosa Parks was the belief that she was just tired and didn't want to move out of her seat." Rosa Parks was not simply tired. She was a community activist who had earlier spent time with Dr. King and others at the Highlander Center in Tennessee, a meeting place where activists frequently gathered to share strategies for nonviolent protest (http://www.highlandercenter.org/). Ms. Parks made a conscious decision not to give up her seat because of racial injustice.