Exclusive: Stacey L. Holman and Shayla Harris talk PBS' Making Black America: Through the Grapevine
Currently playing on PBS is the four-part series Making Black America: Through the Grapevine from executive producer, host and writer Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Professor Gates, with directors Stacey L. Holman and Shayla Harris, chronicle the vast social networks and organizations created by and for Black people beyond the reach of the “White gaze.” The series recounts the establishment of the Prince Hall Masons in 1775 through the formation of all-Black towns and business districts, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, destinations for leisure and the social media phenomenon of Black Twitter. Gates sits with noted scholars, politicians, cultural leaders and old friends to discuss this world behind the color line and what it looks like today. MAKING BLACK AMERICA takes viewers into an extraordinary world that showcased Black people’s ability to collectively prosper, defy white supremacy and define Blackness in ways that transformed America itself.
Making Black America: Through The Grapevine is a production of McGee Media, Inkwell Media and WETA Washington, D.C. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is the writer, host, and executive producer. Dyllan McGee is executive producer. John F. Wilson is executive producer in charge for WETA. Bill Gardner is the executive in charge for PBS. Stacey L. Holman is series producer and director. Shayla Harris is producer/director. Deborah C. Porfido is supervising producer. Robert L. Yacyshyn is line producer. Kevin Burke is producer. Mattie Akers is archival producer.
Stacey L. Holman’s work expands across two continents. From the United States to South Africa, this Harlem-based filmmaker has directed/produced award-winning shorts (Mirar Mirror, Girl Talk), content for cable TV (Red Heeled) and critically acclaimed documentaries (Mary Lou Williams: The Lady Who Swings the Band, Freedom Riders, Jesse Owens). Her most recent work as producer, Tell Them We Are Rising the Story of Black Colleges and Universities, aired on PBS’ Independent Lens in February 2018. Stacey recently finished the short-documentaryDressed Like Kings, which she produced and directed. Currently, she’s teaching a new generation of storytellers at City College of New York.
Shayla Harris is an award-winning independent director and producer based in New York. She recently produced and directed 2 episodes of 4-part series on the history of the black church with Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. that will air on PBS in February 2021. She was also a producer on “Who Killed Malcolm X?,” a 6-part documentary series for Fusion/Netflix that was nominated for an Emmy. Previously, she was a senior producer for digital video at Frontline PBS. Before joining Frontline, she managed the production of enterprise videos and web series at The New York Times and won numerous awards, including an Emmy for “Life, Interrupted,” a documentary series about a young woman with cancer that she shot, edited and produced. In nearly a decade with the Times, she earned a National Magazine Award, a George Foster Peabody, an Overseas Press Club Award and several Emmy nominations for her work. Before that, she worked on award-winning documentaries for Dateline NBC, including as the producer of “The Education of Ms. Groves," which won both an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award and a Peabody. She was also an associate producer on “Pattern of Suspicion,” a duPont-Columbia, Silver Baton investigation of racial profiling in Cincinnati and “Children of War,” an Emmy winning story on Ugandan child soldiers.
Harris has been honored as an IDA Enterprise Documentary Fund Grantee, an IWMF African Great Lakes Reporting Fellow, a Next Generation Leadership Fellow, French-American Foundation Young Leaders Fellow and a Pew International Journalism Fellow. She has served on the Board of Screeners for the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Awards and the Filmmaker Advisory Committee for the IDA’s Enterprise Documentary Fund and has judged multimedia and short documentaries for contests and film festivals like POYi, POY LatAm, World Press Photo and DocNYC. In addition, Harris has taught graduate journalism classes and lectured at conferences at NYU, CUNY, Columbia University, Missouri School of Journalism and many others. She is a graduate of Williams College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
Blackfilmandtv.com’s Wilson Morales spoke with Holman and Harris about their experience working on this project.