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Marcus Garvey once said that “A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots.” If you’re scratching your head wondering who Marcus Garvey is, then you’re in need of a black history lesson, and you might start by watching the PBS debut of Family Pictures USA on PBS Aug. 12 and 13.

The brainchild of filmmaker and artist Thomas Allen Harris, Family Pictures USA is the latest outgrowth of an award-winning body of work from this director who has always been driven by a desire to bring the largely hidden and neglected history of black people in America into the light.

An entirely new type of reality show, this new television series reconstructs the histories of resilient communities such as Detroit and Durham, North Carolina, through the memories of longtime residents and the treasured family photographs they share.

Black History Narratives 

The result is a compelling and educational show that highlights not only individual family stories, but the weaving together of those stories over the course of generations into the history of a larger community, a city, its economy, its culture, and its hopes. The show stands apart for its simple elegance and narratives that, unlike most reality shows, don’t feel contrived.

When the descendants of Frank Wall, a second-generation Duke University janitor who bequeathed $100 to the school for use in the advancement of black men, share their photos and memories alongside the descendants of George Washington Duke, the white tobacco industrialist for whom Duke University is named, the history of those families, the city of Durham, and its most famous institutions, takes on a whole new meaning.

(Family Pictures USA/Flickr)

Centered on pictures of people who are long dead, the storytelling of their descendants is very much alive, honest, and intimate and Family Pictures USA’s approach to mining these stories also stands apart for its inclusiveness. Says Harris, simply, “You can’t tell American history without including African American history.”

While Harris, who teaches film and African American History at Yale, is always motivated in part by a desire to educate, he admits to being surprised by how much he learns in doing the show. “The stories of black business people who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps that you never heard about or had an image for were pretty amazing. The series helped me understand how towns were formed and how they developed and how people of means and employers shaped culture and people’s lives.”

Breaking Down Stereotypes in Country’s Current Political Tone 

Harris, who stepped out from behind the camera to host the series, says it has been the most financially ambitious project he’s directed to date. Leveraging the success of his 2014 award-winning documentary, Through the Lens, Darkly, he and his partners raised $2.3 million largely through grants from the Ford Foundation and others. PBS, which is eager to compete more dynamically with other networks, invested about $250,000. A small network of high net worth African American businesspeople also contributed. In order to complete the series, Harris is still looking to close a $125,000 gap.

Harris, a Harvard graduate who began his career in public television, first produced award-winning shows in his native New York for WNET. He says that even 30 years later, raising money for new film projects remains a challenge.

Thomas Allen Harris (Family Pictures USA)

“Artists are used to networking with other artists, but I don’t know if we’re used to networking with people who think radically differently than we do, who may be business or finance people,” he says. No matter what your background is, to successfully finance a project, Harris adds, “You have to be able to tolerate rejection without any kind of resentment. Persistence and finding those sweet spots of commonality are key.”

Family Pictures USA certainly offers those sweet spots. Especially given the tone of the country as the 2020 election nears; Harris says he hopes the show will help break down the stereotypes and other barriers that divide us, and that through the show’s all-inclusive spectrum of photos, we will come to see ourselves in each other more and lean more into our commonalities.

As he says in a promo, “Once you see our history through family pictures, you’ll never see this country the same way again.”

More articles by Caroline Clarke: 

• UNPACKING THE WENDY WILLIAMS EXPERIENCE
• BAD ASS BLACK WOMEN: TIME TO CLAIM YOUR PLACE IN HISTORY
• This Woman May Have Been the First Black Woman Manager in the Fortune 500

Source: SensorSpot / Getty

Making the decision to part ways with a toxic relative can be difficult. After all, you are family and since you were old enough to talk, you were likely taught that family should stick together through thick and thin. Unfortunately, some take this to mean that they can treat their loved ones however they please without consequence. While it can be deeply troubling to pull the trigger when it comes to a decision of this magnitude, it is sometimes it’s the only thing that you can do to protect your emotional wellbeing. Here are some major signs that it’s time to cut ties with your toxic relative.

There’s no growth

People are capable of growth and evolution — even people who have done pretty terrible things in the past. However, when you notice zero growth in a person and they continue doing the same awful things they did in their teens now that they’re in their 30s, 40s and 50s, it might be time to cut your losses.

Their toxicity is interfering with your day-to-day life

When the stress and anxiety of dealing with that person begin to interfere with your ability to function in your daily life, it’s time to take a step back. This can manifest in many ways including difficulty sleeping, loss of appetite or inability to focus following interactions with the person.

You can’t fully enjoy holidays or major life events

One day while reflecting on the last ten years of my life, it dawned on me that every single one of my major life event was somehow tied to attacks from one particular relative, which, in an indirect way, always placed a damper on the milestone. From college graduations to the birth of a child, it’s almost as if my personal milestones were an alarm clock that alerted her to the fact that she hadn’t shown her a– in a while. There’s something about holidays and major life events that really causes people to act out. But when you’re finding that one specific person is sucking the joy out of every holiday and milestone, it’s time to separate yourself.

Their manipulation is clouding your judgment

I’ve always been perplexed by people who think that their over-the-top emotional reactions have the power to move people or alter their circumstances. Then, one day, I had to sit back and think about the fact that in many cases, they do, which is why toxic people continue to have them. My moment of truth came during a time when I was considering making a decision that would potentially cause my daughter distress just to keep my relative’s emotional reactions at bay. At that point, I knew that I was losing it and needed to take a humungous step back from this person.

The majority of their interactions are negative or abusive

When it gets to a point where the majority of your interactions with a person are negative and during the simplest of interactions, you feel as though you’re trying to navigate through a field of land mines, it’s time to re-examine the relationship and ask yourself if it adds any true value to your life. You know, when it feels as though every question is being asked with an ulterior motive in mind and every comment is meant to disparage.

Following a five-year delay, the story of Emmett Till’s horrific murder told through the eyes of his mother will come to life. On Monday, ABC announced that Mamie Till-Mobley will be the focus of the first season of Women of the Movement, a new anthology series that chronicles the civil rights movement “as told by the women behind it,” according to reports by Vulture. The series will be executive produced by Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter and Will Smith.

The first eight-episode season is loosely based on the book Emmett Till: The Murder That Shocked the World and Propelled the Civil Rights Movement by author Devery S. Anderson. It will center on Mamie Till, who devoted her life to seeking justice for her son after he was brutally murdered in 1955 for allegedly whistling at a white woman in Mississippi. He was then kidnapped, beaten, shot in the head, and thrown into the Tallahatchie River by white men at just 14 years old. During his funeral, Till’s mother insisted on an open-casket so that the world could see the severity of his attack through images of his mutilated body. Although Till’s killers were acquitted by an all-white jury, his murder was a key catalyst in the launch of the civil rights movement.

Carter and Smith initially pitched the story of Mamie Till-Mobley to HBO as a six-hour miniseries years ago, but the project was stalled at the network. Once it left HBO, the producers modified the pitch to focus on multiple women who played a pivotal role in the fight for equality during the civil rights era. According to Deadline, Rosa Parks will be the subject of the second season in the anthology series.

This won’t be the first time that Carter and Smith have teamed up. The megastars previously partnered to produce the Fela Kuti-inspired Broadway musical Fela! as well as the 2014 film remake of Annie.

We’re truly in the age of Spider-Man. Again. Or still. Maybe it’s always been the age of Spider-Man. But as any good webhead knows, the Spider-Verse always has room for more. At the Television Critics Association on Wednesday, we learned that a “handful” of live-action Spider-Man television show ideas are in development. This comes from Oscar-winning producer of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse, Chris Miller. We told you earlier in the year that Miller and his producing partner Phil Lord had an overall deal at Sony that put them in charge of Spidey shows. While he couldn’t say what they were, Miller did seem to indicate a few of them were on the way.

From Deadline, Miller said “We are developing a handful of live-action shows using Sony’s Marvel characters, of which there are like 900 characters”. Sony has a very robust roster of Spider-adjacent characters to choose from. This is how we got a Venom movie with no Peter Parker, and a movie with Jared Leto as Morbius, the living vampire.

Miller continued, “We’re figuring out a way to develop the shows so that each are their own unique experience but are also related.” So not only will the series stand alone, they’ll also connect in some fashion. With 900 characters in their back pocket, that could be a hefty lineup of shows. Maybe similar to the CW’s Arrowverse, there could be several shows that meet up once in a while for sweeps.

While Miller wouldn’t say where and when the shows would premiere, he seemed to intimate it could be a platform like Netflix. “It’ll be a little while before it all comes together and is on the air, but I think it is going to be something really special. Hopefully we’ll know in the next few months where it’ll be and what the schedule will be.”

We’re certainly jazzed for whatever Lord and Miller will do next in the Spider-Man oeuvre. Especially if it’s live-action; the pair obviously made a splash with their animated film, and if they could bring that kind of tone and attitude to live-action, it may indeed, as he said, be something really special.

Images: Marvel/Sony

Kyle Anderson is the Editor at Large for Nerdist. You can find his film and TV reviews here. Follow him on Twitter!

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