The Making of ‘Eyes on Mississippi’
“Eyes on Mississippi” is a 56-minute documentary on dogged civil-rights reporter Wilson F. Minor. The film, a five-year project, draws on 40 hours of interviews with Minor and historical footage from 18 archives around the country. The documentary’s producer-director is Ellen Ann Fentress. Co-writer and film editor is Lida Gibson.
“Eyes on Mississippi,” the story of the power of one reporter who took on racism and dishonest government, carries particular resonance in the current culture. In fact, Minor’s career—he was probably the nation’s oldest working journalist at the time of his death at age 94 on March 28, 2017, —stretched from the 1940s into the Trump administration.
The film examines how Minor witnessed, and occasionally shaped, U.S. history in his coverage of the civil rights movement.
His fair-minded reporting from the struggle’s epicenter stood in contrast to the distorted pro-segregation journalism of many Southern news outlets of the era. Legendary civil rights leader Medgar Evers trusted Minor as the rare local white reporter with a sense of justice. Truth became costly. Three 1964 Freedom Summer volunteers decided to investigate a church burning in Neshoba County after Minor broke the story. The volunteers’ resulting murders helped awaken the nation to the stakes of the struggle.
Minor made his name as the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s Mississippi correspondent. The documentary makes the case that some of his most crucial reporting, however, may have been his quiet, anonymous civil-rights coverage for The New York Times and Newsweek. The scant use of contributor bylines in the era kept Minor’s national work a secret from his Times-Picayune employers. Despite his anonymity to national readers, he was an open secret to the national press corps. Visiting reporters routinely turned to Minor for information.
The documentary explores how Minor’s position as a witness became a contribution of its own. The title “Eyes on Mississippi” has two meanings. It was the name of Minor’s long-time column and was his strategy. He thought the fastest route to change was getting the unvarnished facts of the struggle out to the world. The more eyes on Mississippi, the more the pressure for transformation.
Minor was presented with Harvard University’s Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism in 1966 and Columbia University’s John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1997. Minor, 94, died in March 2017. He was still writing his syndicated column until his final illness.
Besides Minor, other notable figures are film participants: Presidential Medal of Freedom winner John Doar, New York Times journalist Claude Sitton, civil-rights leaders Myrlie Evers and Jackson physician Dr. Robert Smith, former Mississippi governor William Winter, Pultizer-Prize winner Hank Klibanoff and Times Picayune editor Jim Amoss. Both Mr. Doar and Mr. Sitton have passed away since being filmed.
“Eyes on Mississippi” has been screened at the Missouri School of Journalism, Tulane University, Atlanta History Center, Vanderbilt University, Maryland’s Washington College, numerous other colleges in the South and Ole Miss’ Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics.
To follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Eyesonmississippiproject/
Coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/business/media/bill-minor-dead-mississippi-reporter-on-civil-rights.html?_r=0
http://www.channelnonfiction.com/eyes-on-mississippi-a-new-documentary-about-how-one-journalist-fought-white-supremacy-in-mississippi-review/
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2016/07/21/bill-minor-documentary-shows-thursday/87381006/
“Eyes on Mississippi,” the story of the power of one reporter who took on racism and dishonest government, carries particular resonance in the current culture. In fact, Minor’s career—he was probably the nation’s oldest working journalist at the time of his death at age 94 on March 28, 2017, —stretched from the 1940s into the Trump administration.
The film examines how Minor witnessed, and occasionally shaped, U.S. history in his coverage of the civil rights movement.
His fair-minded reporting from the struggle’s epicenter stood in contrast to the distorted pro-segregation journalism of many Southern news outlets of the era. Legendary civil rights leader Medgar Evers trusted Minor as the rare local white reporter with a sense of justice. Truth became costly. Three 1964 Freedom Summer volunteers decided to investigate a church burning in Neshoba County after Minor broke the story. The volunteers’ resulting murders helped awaken the nation to the stakes of the struggle.
Minor made his name as the New Orleans Times-Picayune’s Mississippi correspondent. The documentary makes the case that some of his most crucial reporting, however, may have been his quiet, anonymous civil-rights coverage for The New York Times and Newsweek. The scant use of contributor bylines in the era kept Minor’s national work a secret from his Times-Picayune employers. Despite his anonymity to national readers, he was an open secret to the national press corps. Visiting reporters routinely turned to Minor for information.
The documentary explores how Minor’s position as a witness became a contribution of its own. The title “Eyes on Mississippi” has two meanings. It was the name of Minor’s long-time column and was his strategy. He thought the fastest route to change was getting the unvarnished facts of the struggle out to the world. The more eyes on Mississippi, the more the pressure for transformation.
Minor was presented with Harvard University’s Louis Lyons Award for Conscience and Integrity in Journalism in 1966 and Columbia University’s John Chancellor Award for Excellence in Journalism in 1997. Minor, 94, died in March 2017. He was still writing his syndicated column until his final illness.
Besides Minor, other notable figures are film participants: Presidential Medal of Freedom winner John Doar, New York Times journalist Claude Sitton, civil-rights leaders Myrlie Evers and Jackson physician Dr. Robert Smith, former Mississippi governor William Winter, Pultizer-Prize winner Hank Klibanoff and Times Picayune editor Jim Amoss. Both Mr. Doar and Mr. Sitton have passed away since being filmed.
“Eyes on Mississippi” has been screened at the Missouri School of Journalism, Tulane University, Atlanta History Center, Vanderbilt University, Maryland’s Washington College, numerous other colleges in the South and Ole Miss’ Overby Center for Southern Journalism and Politics.
To follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Eyesonmississippiproject/
Coverage: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/28/business/media/bill-minor-dead-mississippi-reporter-on-civil-rights.html?_r=0
http://www.channelnonfiction.com/eyes-on-mississippi-a-new-documentary-about-how-one-journalist-fought-white-supremacy-in-mississippi-review/
http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2016/07/21/bill-minor-documentary-shows-thursday/87381006/
