Local history comes alive in “Civil Warriors”

By Jamie Swinnerton
Tompkins Weekly

 

While teaching today’s students about the many great heroes of black history, Southside Community Center, in partnership with local production company PhotoSynthesis Productions, is offering the Ithaca community a chance to learn about several less known, but hyper-local, heroes. This Saturday, Feb. 24, Southside will be hosting a screening of the PhotoSynthesis film “Civil Warriors,” a story presented through spoken word performances of four Black American men who enlisted in the United States Colored Troops (USCT) and fought in the American Civil War.

About 12 years ago, co-directors of the film, Deborah Hoard and Che Broadnax, attended a dramatic reading of a play by county historian Carol Kammen about 26 African American men of Tompkins County who enlisted to fight in the Civil War. They bought the rights to the play with the intent of turning it into an educational film.

“We hatched this idea that we could take the raw materials, the true story that she had uncovered, and some of the characters she developed and turn it into a film of our own in some new way. So, we struck a deal with Carol for the rights to that play, then we re-envisioned it with a local spoken-word artist, Ben Porter Lewis,” Hoard said. “We got lots of good, local support that helped us get it shot as a series of spoken-word performances, that was really awesome. Sort of like an epic poem. Six characters each speaking alone.”

But the film was missing some context. What was going on in the war? Why were these characters where they were? The story needed a narrator of sorts. Luckily, the perfect fit was found right here in Ithaca.

“So, we worked together with Sean Eversley Bradwell who is on the staff at Ithaca College, and he is sort of a host-narrator that provides context and explains how these 26 black men from Ithaca came to enlist in the US Colored Troops at the St. James AME Zion Church downtown on what was then Wheat Avenue,” Hoard said.
In fact, almost everything about this film is local. A good portion of the funding came from local organizations like the Park Foundation and the Community Foundation. The music in the film is by local musicians. Both in front of the camera and behind it are artists, filmmakers, and producers who have some sort of Ithaca connection, whether that be from going to school at Ithaca College or Cornell University, or from living and working right here in Tompkins County.

But Hoard said they didn’t want to just make a film and be done with it. Along with the film, the team behind “Civil Warriors” also created a curriculum to foster education and conversation about the film. Created by Eversley Bradwell and local social studies teacher Bronwen Exter, the curriculum is aimed at eleventh-grade students.

“It is my feeling that we might be able to get the film on public television or we could stream it in various things, but to really allow it to do what we want it to do, which is help bring about a more just society, and make a change, that it really needs to be seen by young people,” Hoard said. “Because it can be tricky bringing up some of these topics, it can be uncomfortable in the classroom to talk about slavery and teachers and students can be understandably wary, so the curriculum helps to guide people a little bit with some warnings about how this is a difficult thing to talk about but it’s important enough to try.”

The film is divided into five sections and the curriculum includes questions and readings for before and after to guide the conversation. Extra resources that can be found online are also included in the curriculum. The plan is to sell the curriculum along with the DVD to educational institutions.

“We really hope that showing it at the end of Ithaca Loves Teacher’s week is sort of a neat way to get teachers to know about it and to talk about the curriculum,” Hoard said.

The film team has been working closely with the History Center in Tompkins County and Historic Ithaca. Hoard said it was these organizations that brought her the idea of screening the film at Southside Community Center during Black History Month. Fittingly, this year’s national theme for Black History Month is “African American’s in Times of War.”

“I said ‘Great’ because that’s been in our plan all along to do something there but it was their instigation, which I thank them for,” Hoard said. “They really have brought us together.”

Over the 12 years it has taken to make this film, from first seeing the play to now, Hoard said there have been numerous times that she and Broadnax felt a story like this would be socially relevant. PhotoSyntheses Productions is not unfamiliar with covering topics that necessitate conversations about race. But, Hoard said they have been wanting to make a film about racism in America, and its historical influence in America, for a while.

Both Hoard and Broadnax will be at Saturday’s screening, which starts at 6 p.m. Donations to Southside Community Center are encouraged.