Wright's Long Black Line organization funds JJHS students' efforts to record Jasper County history
"A great editor takes a mess and blends it into a scene."
By SHARON KERR Staff Writer

Courtesy photo HERMAN WRIGHT JR. presented Jasper Junior High School with a check to buy recording equipment. They will tape interviews with people who remember Jasper "back when." From left:Wright; students Drake Floyd, Justin Mays,Avery Koch, Berenice Villalpando and Justin Lenderman; Long Black Line advisers Walter Diggles and Brent Meaux.

Herman Wright Jr. aims to "wake up a whole generation to find out where they came from." To reach that goal, he presented Jasper Junior High School with a check for $2,500 to buy recording equipment so that students can begin the exploration of Jasper County history.

The name Wright is well known in Jasper, where Herman Wright Sr. served on the JISD board of trustees for 17 years. But as Herman Wright Jr. explains in a film trilogy he is working on, his father was one man in The Long Black Line that stretches back through his grandmother Arvetta Wright and great-grandfather Benjamin Wright.

Former slaves founded freedom colonies all over Texas shortly after the Civil War ended. Much of the history of those communities was never recorded, but Wright's company, MC3, hopes to recapture some of that history by taping family stories about the early pioneers.

Herman Wright Jr. grew up all over the world. His father rose to lieutenant colonel in a 24-year military career that included tours in Korea, Vietnam, Africa and Panama. Like most military families, they moved a lot.

The one constant in Wright's young life was summers spent in Jasper County on the family ranch near Mt. Union. Wright even spent one year at Rowe before integration, "the only time I ever attended a segregated school in my life," Wright says. "I had a great time here."

Wright earned a law degree and went on to a successful career as a marketing executive in Los Angeles, but when his father was diagnosed with a terminal illness, he began commuting regularly to Jasper to help out. He says he realized for the first time, "This is my home, my history. This is what made me a powerful player in the world. When my children come home for the holidays, even though they never lived in Jasper, this is their center of gravity.

"We are indebted to five generations who built this from absolutely nothing," Wright said. "We need to make sure our children know that."

The JISD project

Wright Jr. found a like mind in JJHS history teacher Diane Pace, herself a descendant of Jasper pioneers. Each year her classes tackle a special project. Last year, her class created the historical Jasper city tour for Azalea Fest.

This year students will not learn history, they will make it. They will take recording equipment and interview people about what they remember, the times they lived through, and the family stories that have been passed down for generations.

Pace said the tech class will take these oral histories and create a website that anyone can access.

Wright said he hopes Jasper will become a template for other communities to record oral histories of pioneering families, who made great sacrifices to found new communities.

"The people who came here in the 1800's, they didn't come because they wanted to vacation here," Wright told Pace's class. "They wanted to have children and raise their families the very best they could, and it was hard."

Wright began the process of interviewing his own relatives and residents of Mt. Union in 2001. He is turning those interviews into a film trilogy called The Long Black Line, an American story.

Pace's class got a preview of what will probably air as a PBS documentary. Wright knows that to get good interviews takes skill, so he offers the kids some tips.

"A great editor takes a mess and blends it into a scene," Wright tells student filmmakers. "But you don't want your editor to have to work too hard."

As an example, he asks students to identify background problems in a clip where he interviews a man standing in front of a memorial near a busy road.

One student correctly identifies a background noise as street traffic. The editor covered that by cutting away to a war scene and letting the audience suppose the mechanical roar was deliberate sound effects, when in fact, it was a noisy vehicle that could not be cut out of the interview.

"I knew I wasn't going to get this chance again," Wright explained. "The man was sick." He said he might have re-done the audio track in a studio if he had had the chance.

One boy asked if noises couldn't be edited out digitally now, and Wright replied, "Yes, but it's expensive."

Lighting can be another expensive problem. "Unless you have lighting professionals and the right equipment that costs thousands of dollars, shoot outside," Wright said. "Always shoot outside, and you've got to take control of your environment when you are shooting."

The environment controls everything. Look around the edges, move the subject (or move items in the background) and think quiet on the set. Then, Wright says its up to the interviewer. He tells the students to:

Ask for people's stories, not "what is your name" or "when did that happen?" If you ask questions that can be answered in one word (yes, maybe, Jasper, 1941), then one-word answers are all you'll get. Say, "Tell me your story."

Pay attention. Allow the person being interviewED to talk and remember (and don't interrupt with your own stories or the interview is over).

"Many of us are not storytellers," Wright says, "but we all have a story in us."

And the last bit of advice is, "An interview is a gift- always say thank you."

Next week: The Rosenwald Schools, most endangered according to the National Historic Trust.