From Session 5 of 16 — Black is …? — at Orphans 2022: Counter-Archives, Concordia University, Tiohtià:ke / Montréal. The first three presentations on this panel. The symposium program listing is here.
Dr. Teddy Reeves & Ina D. Archer (Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture) “Photographed By Willie P. Jackson”: Portraiture and Experimental Cinematography in Willie P. Jackson’s Church of God films (ca. late 1940s)
Abstract:
William “Willie” P. Jackson (1910-1980) is an almost entirely unknown filmmaker. Until 2021, his work was not part of a single memory institution or archive. Working largely as the in-house filmmaker for the Washington, D.C. congregation of Elder Solomon Lightfoot Michaux’s Church of God, Willie P. Jackson created films in an underground
of his own making. Many have an almost hermetic quality to them. Often documentation of Church activities and performances, the first glance “amateur” quality of the films belies a much more sophisticated eye for subtlety and detail that arrives the more one watches the films. It is in his animation works that Jackson’s artistry really shines and his “experimental” techniques come through. His acronym animation on the name of Christ or footage of Michaux’s costumed Devil could easily play next to a Tom Rubnitz piece from decades later.
In 2021, NMAAHC acquired nineteen 16mm films (color, silent) from the Parham family, decedents of Willie P. Johnson. NMAAHC also acquired several video tapes of work from later in Jackson’s life. This presentation aims to bring the name and work of Willie P. Jackson to the film and archive scholarly community so that his artistry and achievements can be more formally recognized and further researched.
Much of Willie P. Jackson’s work documents the activities of Elder Solomon Lightfoot Michaux. Brother of Lewis H. Michaux, founder and operator of the African National Memorial Bookstore in Harlem NYC, Solomon Lightfoot is perhaps one of the most counter-archival figures of the 20th century. A pioneering and towering figure in early radio and television as well as a successful publisher and astute businessman, Solomon Lightfoot’s reactionary political leanings find him being almost entirely left out of popular history of the dual mid-century African American movements of Civil Right and Black Power, those dominated by figures such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. This is despite the fact that Solomon Lightfoot Michaux arguably reached millions more eyes and ears than other African American figures of the time. Willie P. Jackson, as an unknown filmmaker working largely by himself, documenting Michaux’s church while practicing his own forms of experimental film and documentary is by definition a counter-archival and intersectional figure.
Owned by the Parham family and saved from near certain destruction by scholar Suzanne Smith. Michaux’s Church of God slowly declined following his death and the films of Willie P. Jackson were unmoored from the anchor that gave them life. The films are as much “castaways”, survivors of a shipwreck, as “orphans” and NMAAHC is honored to help make them a new favorite of the Museum’s collection.
Bios
Teddy Reeves, (M.Div. 2013 Princeton Theological Seminary; PhD 2021 Fordham University) is Curator of Religion & Co-Interim Head of the Center for the Study of African American Religious Life, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of African American History and Culture. He is host and executive producer of gOD-Talk, NMAAHC’s web-based series exploring Black faith in the 21st century. teddyreeves.com
Ina D. Archer is Media Conservation and Digitization Specialist at NMAAHC. She is also an artist, filmmaker, programmer, and writer. She has taught at Parsons School for Design at the New School and holds a master’s degree in Cinema Studies from NYU. She blogs at Continuum Film and Black Leader and contributes to Film Comment.