Our Truth. Our History. Our Story.

Episode 26: MVAAFF: The Grit of It All | W.E.B. Du Bois at Martha’s Vineyard

We took W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause to the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, and it was the exact documentary for the moment.

Getting there was a journey of its own: plane, bus, ferry, and finally Vineyard Haven. But once we arrived, we entered a gathering place for Black filmmakers, artists, scholars, actors, and audiences coming together to celebrate our stories and our culture.

In this episode of Our Truth. Our History. Our Story., I’m bringing you inside our MVAAFF conversation about W.E.B. Du Bois with actor Courtney B. Vance, sociologist and scholar Dr. Karida Brown, and our moderator, Dr. Nii-Quartelai Quartey.

We explore the freedom Du Bois experienced as a young man studying in Berlin, his groundbreaking use of data and empirical sociology in The Philadelphia Negro, and why his scholarship remains so relevant today.

As Dr. Brown reminds us, we are still living in a Du Boisian moment. Scholarship, intellectual rigor, journalism, art, and storytelling have always been part of the Black freedom struggle.

Courtney B. Vance takes us deeper into Du Bois’ evolution as a thinker, scholar, activist, and creative, and why we must support those who continue doing the work of telling our stories.

And we talk about something essential to my own approach to documentary filmmaking: the grit of it all.

Du Bois’ story includes extraordinary accomplishments, but it also includes pain, loss, mistakes, contradictions, racism, lynching, and the death of his young son. If we want to understand a life, we cannot turn away from its difficult parts.

It is our job as filmmakers to take you beyond the pleasant parts of a life and into the grit of it all.

This is our truth. Our history. Our story.

And this is only the beginning of our Martha’s Vineyard journey. Over the next two episodes, I’ll share more from MVAAFF and some of what was happening beyond the festival.

LINKS & RESOURCES

W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause
Learn more about the documentary:
https://ritacoburn.com

The Root: “W.E.B. Du Bois Doc ‘Rebel With a Cause’ Isn’t History. It’s a Warning.”
https://www.theroot.com/w-e-b-du-bois-doc-rebel-with-a-cause-isnt-history-it-2000120737

Our Truth. Our History. Our Story. – RSS Feed
https://rss.alivepodcastnetwork.com/our-truth-our-history-our-story-our-ths

Watch this episode
https://youtu.be/cVitIRg86w8

FEATURED LOCATION

• Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival (MVAAFF)

• Vineyard Haven, Martha’s Vineyard

FEATURED GUESTS

Courtney B. Vance – Emmy and Tony Award-winning actor who performs the words of W.E.B. Du Bois in W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause and narrated David Levering Lewis’ Pulitzer Prize-winning Du Bois biographies.

Dr. Karida Brown – Sociologist, author, and scholar whose work examines race, Black communities, culture, and the African American experience.

Dr. Nii-Quartelai Quartey – Moderator of our MVAAFF conversation.

Rita Coburn – Director, writer, and producer of W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause and host of Our Truth. Our History. Our Story.

FEATURED WORKS

• W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause

• The Philadelphia Negro by W.E.B. Du Bois

• The Crisis

• David Levering Lewis’ biographies of W.E.B. Du Bois

IN THIS EPISODE

• Taking W.E.B. Du Bois: Rebel With A Cause to MVAAFF

• Why Du Bois’ years in Berlin transformed his understanding of what freedom could look like

• The Philadelphia Negro and Du Bois’ pioneering role in empirical sociology

• How Du Bois used facts, data, and evidence to challenge ideas of Black inferiority

• Why Black scholars and intellectuals remain essential to the Black freedom struggle

• Du Bois as both scholar and creative

• Courtney B. Vance on discovering the complexity of Du Bois

• The disagreements among Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Marcus Garvey, and other Black leaders

• Confronting lynching, racism, grief, loss, and the death of Du Bois’ son

• Why documentary filmmakers cannot tell only the pleasant parts of a person's life

• The responsibility to tell the truth, including the grit of it all

THE GRIT OF IT ALL

History becomes more powerful when we allow people to be fully human.

We cannot understand W.E.B. Du Bois only through his degrees, books, organizations, and accomplishments. We also have to understand what he witnessed, what he lost, where he struggled, and how those experiences shaped the man he became.

We cannot turn away from what happened to us.

That is part of the responsibility of documentary filmmaking: to use the words, images, scholarship, music, performances, and historical record to bring us closer to the whole person.

Not just the pleasant parts of life.

The grit of it all.

MUSIC

Music by Damien Sebe - so good - https://thmatc.co/?l=D6BE065E

PRODUCTION CREDITS

Host, Writer & Producer
Rita Coburn

Communications Director & Producer
Christine Coburn Whack

Producer
H. Lee Whack

A Production of RCW Media Productions, Inc.