Meet The Experts

DICK LEHR

Dick Lehr is a journalist and author, currently teaching at the Journalism Department of BU's College of Communication. Dick worked for the Boston Globe for 18 years, and was promoted to Special Projects Reporter, responsible for initiation of long-term reporting projects. He is the author of several books including the New York Times bestseller Black Mass: The Irish Mob, the FBI and the recipient of several prestigious journalism and book awards, and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1997. Dick was a consultant for Dateline NBC on a program about FBI corruption surrounding the Boston gangster James J. "Whitey'' Bulger, as well as coverage of the 2008 murder trial of former FBI agent John J. Connolly.

DOLITA CATHCART

DOLITA CATHCART is a student of Boston history, and dedicated her PhD research to William Monroe Trotter and the evolving role and political transformation of Boston’s elite black community on the national stage. Cathcart’s earlier work on the civil rights movement of the 1960s in addition to her work on early 20th century elite black activists provides the bridge between the early development of a 20th century movement and the result of that evolving movement at mid-century. Her painstaking research has yielded colorful details that will help us bring Trotter and turn-of-the-20th-century Boston to life. 14 Birth of a Movement - Narrative | Center for Independent Documentary

Charles Musser

Professor of Film and Media Studies, Yale University, and a filmmaker with extensive experience working in Hollywood, Musser has run Yale’s acclaimed Summer Film Institute program for many years while establishing himself as a leading authority on the early history of cinema. Musser is also an authority on early black cinema, penning Oscar Micheaux and His Circle: African-American Filmmaking and Race Cinema of the Silent Era.

SPIKE LEE

SPIKE LEE is an Academy Award-winning writer and director who has built his career around work that examines race relations in America, including Do the Right Thing (1989). He was awarded the Gish Prize for “his brilliance and unwavering courage in challenging conventional thinking.” While he was a student in NYU’s prestigious Tisch School, he wrote and directed The Answer (1980) as a direct response to Birth of a Nation in which an African American screenwriter is hired to write a Birth of a Nation remake. Lee has become one of the most prolific African American filmmakers and a public voice about racial tension 16 Birth of a Movement - Narrative | Center for Independent Documentary.

JELANI COBB

JELANI COBB is an Associate Professor of History and Director of the Africana Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut. He’s a frequent contributor to the New Yorker, Essence, and Vibe, and will soon be releasing a book, Antidote to Revolution: African American Anticommunism and the Struggle for Civil Rights, 1931-1957. His writing and research are centered on race, politics, and history. Cobb’s recent article published in the New Yorker, “The Sad Prescience of ‘The Birth of a Nation,” tells of the centennial legacy of Birth of a Nation. Cobb expertly contextualizes the film’s ongoing legacy into the plight of present-day African Americans.

MELVYN STOKES

MELVYN STOKES is a professor of American film history at University College London, Stokes’ book D. W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation": A History of "The Most Controversial Motion Picture of All Time" was hailed by the American Historical Review as "likely to be its definitive chronicle in the twenty-first century." In his analysis of the reception of the film in Boston, he shows how Trotter played a major part in the fight against the film and the impact of that struggle within the wider African American community. Stokes has also written extensively on the reception of Birth of a Nation abroad and the cultural memory of the Civil War era. He has a particular interest in the audiences for Hollywood films, having co-edited five books on the subject. 15 Birth of a Movement - Narrative | Center for Independent Documentary

Ira Gallen

IRA GALLEN HAS been almost single-handedly responsible for saving and preserving a big chunk of television history, both as an archivist/collector and as a video and television producer/director. Born in Brooklyn, NY, Ira Herman Gallen became a film enthusiast while in his teens, and for several years studied with and assisted film historian Seymour Stern. Gallen was fascinated by the silent era, especially the work of D.W. Griffith, and started showing films while in high school. He also began collecting films, and not just feature-length movies

MARK ELLIOTT

MARK ELLIOTT’s research in American history at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro concentrates on the period immediately following the Civil War, focusing on the struggle between Southern whites’ move to reassert dominance and Southern blacks’ attempts to continue the Reconstruction process and achieve parity. One of the historical figures he has studied most closely is Thomas Dixon, Jr., whose life encompasses many of the themes of his research.

VINCENT BROWN

VINCENT BROWN, a Professor of History, African, and African American Studies at Harvard University, is a multi-media historian. He is the author of The Reaper’s Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery, directs the History Design Studio, and producer of a PBS Independent Lens documentary about anthropologist Melville J. Kerksovits. Brown offers insights into the issues of media representation of African Americans in the early 20th century surrounding the film’s release.

ROBERT BELLINGER

ROBERT BELLINGER is an Associate Professor of History and director of the Black Studies program at Suffolk University. His research focuses on late 19th century African American history and West African history. His publications include: “African American in White Institutions of Higher Education, 1890-1910” and an entry in The Encyclopedia of African American Culture and History titled, “Boston,” and “William H. Hastie.” He paints a colorful history of the response to Birth of a Nation within the African American communities in Boston and elsewhere across the United States.

DAVID BLIGHT

DAVID BLIGHT is one of the nation's foremost authorities on the U.S. Civil War and its legacy. His recent scholarship has focused on the role of historical memory and the ways American society grappled with the war in its aftermath. His book Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory presented a new way of understanding the nation's collective response to the war. This book and related essays have helped give birth to the emerging academic field of historical memory studies. They also have direct bearing on the attitudes and ideas that underpin D. W. Griffith’s film Birth of a Nation.

REGINALD HUDLIN

REGINALD HUDLIN is a film director, writer, and producer, Reginald Hudlin began his film career at Harvard University where he directed a short film that went on to receive awards including first place at the Black American Cinema Society Awards. Hudlin spent two years as the executive producer of the NAACP Image Awards and from 2005-2008, he was President of Entertainment for BET. Hudlin is a producer on Tarantino’s 2012 success Django Unchained.

HENRY LOUS GATES, JR

Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. is an American literary critic, teacher, historian, filmmaker and public intellectual who currently serves as the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He discovered what are considered the earliest known literary works of African-American writers, and has published extensively on appreciating African-American literature as part of the Western canon. In addition to producing and hosting previous series on the history and genealogy of prominent American figures, since 2012 Gates has been host for four seasons of the television series Finding Your Roots on PBS. It combines the work of expert researchers in genealogy, history, and genetics historic research to tell guests about their ancestors' lives and histories.

ELLEN SCOTT

ELLEN SCOTT is an Associate Professor of Media Studies at Queens College where she her research has focused on the cultural meanings and impacts of film in African American communities. She has explored the relationship between media and the struggle for racial equality; particularly in her book, Cinema Civil Rights, which presents a look at how the Hollywood served to both facilitate and censor the national conversation about race in the pre-civil rights era. She speaks in depth about the struggle between Hollywood’s representation of African Americans and the representation of African Americans by black independent filmmakers.

CHARLENE REGESTER

CHARLENE REGESTER is a professor of African American studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Register has focused her research on black participation in the early years of the film industry. Her essays trace the careers and struggles for notoriety of individual actors, including women. Most relevant for our film is her essay on censorship of black filmmakers during this period, particularly Oscar Micheaux’s efforts to rebut Birth of a Nation through artistic expression demonstrates an alternative approach to censorship; in examining his case we can see that the same censorship demanded by civil rights activists against Griffith was ultimately more of a hindrance to his efforts.

PAUL D. MILLER, AKA DJ SPOOKY,

PAUL D. MILLER, AKA DJ SPOOKY, is a composer, multimedia artist, and writer whose work immerses audiences in a blend of genres, global culture, and environmental and social issues. His large-scale, multimedia performance pieces include “Rebirth of a Nation,” a cut-down version of “The Birth of a Nation” set to his own original score.  In 2014, he was named National Geographic Emerging Explorer. He produced Pioneers of African American Cinema, a collection of the earliest films made by African American directors, released in 2015.  He was the first founding Executive Editor of Origin Magazine.