Inside a "super zippy" silver Dodge Caliber, Evan Pulvers '10, Jing Xu '10, Shruti Parekh '10 and Sarah Gibson '10 blasted a gospel CD. The windows of the rented car were rolled down to let in the 80-degree air, and the odometer read 964 miles as the four girls drove through rolling green vistas toward their spring break destination.
But the freshmen were not headed to Cancun or Miami. They were retracing the steps of Martin Luther King, Jr. as he led marchers from Selma to Montgomery, Ala., in March of 1965. Forty-two years after the original event, the four girls were driving through the deep South to film a documentary on the Civil Rights movement.
The adventure begins
Pulvers' original idea was to walk the 54-mile route during the same week the event took place more than 40 years ago. When Pulvers proposed the idea as a final project for AF 185: "The Civil Rights Movement: History and Legacy," James Campbell, associate professor of Africana studies, urged her to do more.
Pulvers said she came up with the idea to make a documentary on Civil Rights tourism, and applied for a Research at Brown grant. On March 7, less than a month before her scheduled departure, Pulvers received a grant for $940.
Though Pulvers had no experience in filmmaking, she began calling potential interviewees in late February to set up meetings, using names from Civil Rights books and Web sites.
"We ended up interviewing (Rep.) Artur Davis (D-Ala.), who is the congressman from Birmingham, just because we cold-called his office every day for two weeks," Pulvers said.
Once Pulvers finally had an itinerary, all she needed was a documentary team.
In an e-mail to The Herald, Gibson wrote that she had interests in social movements and historical memory before making the documentary. But she never considered pursuing film.
"My decision to join Evan on the trip was completely spontaneous," Gibson wrote. "I really had no idea what to expect."
Parekh and Xu signed on to complete the documentary team, and the adventure began on March 23.
Bumps in the road
Pulvers said the group would rise as early as 5 a.m. and work until 8 p.m. The first night was the longest, when the amateur filmmakers decided to change the crux of the documentary.
"Originally, the focus was going to be Civil Rights tourism," Pulvers said. "But then we figured out 'Damn, that's a lot of us walking around a museum and that is so boring.' "
Pulvers said the purpose of the film became clear as they went about the interview process. "The film is going to revolve around the idea that the fight has changed and people aren't exactly sure how to tackle it," Pulvers said. "It's not a fight against a law that's blatant. ... It's so much more subtle."
Montgomery remains a poor community, with great discrepancy in the affluence of black and whites. Pulvers said the team met with a member of the local board of education who was frustrated because improving one of the city's failing black high schools seemed nearly impossible.
As the team interviewed local Alabamians about challenging issues, the four girls from diverse backgrounds also had to learn to work together to film the project.
"Shruti is Indian, and Jing is Chinese and Swedish, and I'm white and from Oregon and Sarah's white and from Vermont," Pulvers said. "We would go places, and people would say 'Hey, the U.N. is arriving!' So part of it is the odyssey of four girls renting a car, crashing on floors and talking in real ways about race."
Pulvers said the film's style was "definitely amateur." A limited budget required the girls to use a hand-held camera and clip-on microphone.
Parekh and Xu said the greatest challenge was being punctual. Parekh said the group was often overscheduled, rushing from one interview to the next.
The filmmakers laughed as they recalled a long night driving to Tuscaloosa on a road so narrow there was no room to pull over. "It was scary, all was quiet and we were the sole car on this road that went for miles with no road signs," Parekh said. "The church music that was fun (to listen to) during the day was eerie at night."
Interacting with interview subjects also proved difficult.
"I thought people might be guarded and suspicious, and with good reason," Gibson wrote. "There are so many ethical questions of making a documentary, of recording people's stories and editing them for a well-educated college audience, of using images of people and homes to convey the depth of poverty and racism, of interviewing someone about rampant drug use in his neighborhood and then packing up the camera and leaving forever."
Pulvers echoed this sentiment. She said her greatest frustration was observing instead of acting. "How do you hold a video camera and not a shovel?" she said.
"Sometimes the movie, the product, will be the shovel, hopefully," she added.
Witnesses to history
One of the group's major interview subjects was Fred Gray, lawyer to Civil Rights hero Rosa Parks.
In one clip from the documentary, Gray answered questions with his own tape recorder rolling to preserve his words for his memoirs.
"If you don't see the problems, and if you are not willing to commit yourself to solving them, it's not going to get done," he said, addressing the younger generation. In addition to representing Parks and serving as Civil Rights attorney to Martin Luther King, Gray argued the 1965 case Williams v. Wallace, the class action suit against the then-Governor of Alabama George Wallace resulting in court-ordered protection for protestors as they marched from Selma to Montgomery.
In one unedited clip, the classic red Coca-Cola symbol hung over the top part of a sign reading "Armstrong's barber shop." Armstrong was once King's barber. The camera followed his arm as he gestured to the red walls of his Birmingham shop, walls full of black and white photos. Armstrong pointed to an image of black congressmen of the 1872 Reconstruction period. "We have been here before," he said.
Xu said her favorite part of the journey was visiting the Dexter King Memorial Baptist Church, where King was minister during the Montgomery Bus Boycott.
"People were really dressed up for church," Xu said. "I had never seen that before. I had never been in a black community, at a Christian service or in the South."
Parekh agreed about the value of first-hand experience. "There is nothing like going to the site where something happened and talking to the people who were involved and personally being there."
Parekh said one interview often led to another.
"When we were done with interviews, someone would ask us if we had talked to Rosa Park's lawyer, a foot soldier, a famous reverend, a judge and then in a few seconds we would have an interview with one of these people lined up for the next day," she said. Gibson admitted she was nervous upon arriving in Alabama. But she also felt a sense of "deep awe" at the bravery and commitment of the Civil Rights activists she spoke with.
Gibson said people were "incredibly generous."
Pulvers said one interviewee even prepared an elaborate dinner for them.
"Most interviewees were interested in our project, excited that a younger generation wanted to learn about the movement," Pulvers said.
Gibson said they were "happy to tell their story, usually very honest, and touched that we were spending our spring break in Alabama instead of getting drunk on the beach with all those 'college folks.' "
The rewards
By the end of spring break, Pulvers, Gibson, Parekh and Xu had put 1,064 miles on the odometer of the silver Dodge, written 52 thank-you notes and recorded 37 hours of film. For now, Pulvers will take an incomplete in Campbell's class. She said she hopes to have a "rough cut" by the end of the summer, and a final product by December.
She said she would like to submit it to next year's Ivy Film Festival.
Each member of the documentary team took away something serious from spring break 2007.
"Don't wait for the right time, or the right leader to show up," Xu said she learned from the interviews with civil rights activists. "Do what you are committed to doing with the people around you and that's enough to create social change."
The girls' documentary is but a glimpse of an ongoing movement for civil rights, Xu said. "It's a snapshot rather than a movie," she said. "These people are making the movie, still."
