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Murder in Black & White Filmmaker Keith Beauchamp
Gives Voice to Civil Rights-Era Victims
Special Four-Part Documentary Series to Air on TV One, October 5 -
October 8, 10PM, ET
 Santa
Monica, CA (BlackNews.com) - Keith Beauchamp describes it as a calling
of the divine kind. Even non-believers are apt to side with the
filmmaker that his passion for righting the wrongs of generation-old
civil rights cases is far more than an artsy undertaking from an
ambitious auteur. At 37, Beauchamp has become known as a sort of
criminal investigator with a camera, having helped blow open the
tight-lipped case of Emmett Till's brutal murder that occurred some 53
years ago. Beauchamp spent nine years uncovering and piecing together
that complicated puzzle, and now he's embarking on a similar journey
with Murder In Black & White, a series of four one-hour documentaries
examining civil rights murders in the 1940s and 1950s produced for TV
One. The documentaries will air on TV One October 5-8 at 10 PM ET.
We sat down with Beauchamp to learn why the FBI considers him a vital
resource, how victims' families view his work, and what kind of impact
he thinks Murder In Black & White will have.
Q: You spent nine years on The Untold Story of Emmett Louis Till and
now spend many hours digging up information on other cold cases dealing
with civil rights abuses. Do you consider this a calling?
KB: I do. This is something I've dreamed about for so long. And it gives
the families the opportunity to have a voice. So I feel like a
mouthpiece for the family members and the victims. I really do feel that
the creator has put me in this position to really help the family
members and the families of these victims, and that's what I will
continue doing. This is an extension of what I feel is going to be God's
work."
Q: In fact, you majored in criminal justice at Southern
University and even had an experience that sort of speaks to that
calling. What was that?
KB: In Baton Rouge at a high school pre-graduation party I was roughed
up and handcuffed by police officers after dancing with a white girl. I
was taken to a room at the police station, handcuffed to a chair and
assaulted. They almost fractured my jaw. They tried to charge me with
assaulting a police officer because an officer broke his finger or
something during the whole thing. And this was 1999. It made me want to
major in criminal justice and become a civil rights attorney."
Q: The FBI hasn't been the most trusted entity in the black
community. Yet you're working with them. How does that work?
KB: Working on the Emmett Till project I was able to convince them to
come forward and investigate the case because of eyewitnesses I was
finding. I became a mediator, in a sense, helping them have dialogue
with those witnesses. So we work hand in hand. They are giving me an
opportunity to review cases from their files and giving me access to
federal agents who worked on these cases. Some people tend to frown on
the fact that I'm working with them. But the FBI has changed a lot. The
head of the Civil Rights Unit is African American. So it's a new day and
time. They're giving me an opportunity to tell these stories in a way
that has never been told before. So I just run with that."
Q: What do you hope the series will accomplish, if a documentary can
accomplish anything.
KB: "We won't be able to eliminate racism, and we probably won't be able
to generate closure for the families because this is a transgenerational
pain we don't truly understand. But I do think this is a start of that
process of reconciliation. Before we have reconciliation, we have to
have justice, and justice comes in different forms. Of course it's
easier to throw these people in jail and they die off, and you forget
about them. You forget about the victims as well. But most importantly
for me is to know the names of the victims so that in years to come
generations will know their story. And that gives a sense of closure to
the families as well."
Q: People often have a difficult time hearing about these unsolved
cases. How do you expect viewers to react to stories with roughly
unhappy endings?
KB: "My objective is to get them to react. I don't consider what I do as
movies where you have some kind of closing. This is a movement to me.
These films are breathing animals. I want people to feel frustration. If
there was closure, people wouldn't feel an urgency to get up and do
something. Justice needs to be done in these cases. This series is not
just for people to watch. It's for people to become actively involved in
solving these crimes. That's why we are directing viewers who might have
any information to the TV One website where the FBI can be contacted."
Q: Let's flip that. Hearing first hand often gruesome details of
murders, and from emotional family members, how difficult is it for you
to cope personally?
KB: "I still haven't recovered from Emmett Till. I go to bed at night
with nightmares and thinking about these atrocities trying to get closer
to solving them, having people open up to me and invite me into their
homes and telling me stuff that they have never really truly spoken
about. It kind of becomes a part of you in a sense. But I wonder that if
I shake these feelings will the passion die out? I don't want that to
happen. So I just go on."
Q: Using reenactments in Murder In Black & White to show the actual
crimes is a tricky proposition. How did you walk that thin line between
being emotionally effective and reality show cheesy?
KB: Very carefully. I've never been a fan of reenactments. But it was
important that we captured visually what happened. I want the public to
be in the shoes of the victims' families. I want them to feel it
emotionally. When you trigger the emotions in someone it causes them to
react and then act. I know the reenactments will be hard to digest for
some people. That's why we didn't get too gory with anything. But I
wanted a visual for people to feel what the victims were feeling without
actually being the victim."
Q: What Does Al Sharpton bring to Murder In Black & White?
KB: Rev. Sharpton actually helped me in the Emmett Till case when nobody
else believed the case could ever be reopened. He's a perfect fit for
the show because he's one of our civil rights voices of today and people
listen to him. He's more than just a good host. He brings a level of
viewers with him, and that's not a bad thing to have.
Q: How difficult was it to get Murder in Black & White made and on
air?
KB: It's unfortunate when African Americans talk about the black
experience as it relates to white oppression, we are always told to just
forget about it. That it was long ago. Even a lot of black people said
that, mostly out of fear, even now. TV One picked this up after a lot of
other people said no. Our Jewish brothers and sisters don't seem to have
that problem when it comes to the Holocaust. Just as Jews saw the
Germans as terrorists we feel the same way when it came to lynchings
right here in America. That was genocide. But when we want to talk about
slavery or the atrocities done to black people in the name of racism, a
lot of people run away. They cringe when we talk of reparations. Look,
in talking to the families of these victims, I can assure you that
there's not enough money to make up for the blood, sweat and tears that
have been poured by African Americans in this country."
To see a video of Rev Al Sharpton in action, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUi6IYDBbZY
Reverend Al Sharpton: The
Murder in Black and White Interview with Kam Williams
Ken Parish Perkins is a contributing writer for American Way Magazine
and has written for the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, the Dallas
Morning News, the Chicago Defender and Ebony/Jet.com. He can be reached
at kperkins@bigplanet.com
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