Wright's documentary about Mt. Union is finalist in Boomtown Film Festival
By SHARON KERR Staff writer

Above:The Magnolia Springs Spring Hill Community Cemetery is 150 years old. Names and dates on tombstones provide a starting point for many to explore their history. Newsboy photos/ Charles Kerr

The Long Black Line, Herman Wright Jr.'s documentary about some of the founding families of Jasper County, is a finalist in the Boomtown Film Festival this Saturday, May 17.

The film will show at noon at the Beaumont Civic Center at 701 Main St., followed by a question and answer session with Wright. The $15 admission includes films and music at this allday event expected to last until midnight.

The event was organized by director Christopher Dombrosky, who says it "sort of grew out of" the old SpinFest and dormant Spindletop Film Festival, and is supported in part by a grant from the Southeast Texas Arts Council; www.boomtownfestival.co m.

Mt. Union home

Wright grew up in 21 places while his father, Herman Wright Sr. served in the military. He always spent some time each year with his grandparents at the family farm near Mt. Union, and for two years he lived here.

Left:Wright hopes to turn his historic family farm into a place where youth can learn about the contributions and sacrifices of early pioneering families.

When Wright Sr. served in Vietnam, young Herman went to the all-black Rowe, which was also the black high school, in eighth grade, and then spent the first year of integration in the old Jasper High School in ninth grade.

"It was a real education," Wright said, "and I had a blast."

Mostly, he had attended mainly white schools in northern and western states and other countries, so he enjoyed his two years in JISD for different reasons.

"In eighth grade, it was the first time I had been in a school where everyone looked like me, where I knew people and was related to some, including some of the teachers," Wright said. "And then in ninth grade, everyone else was sort of awkward in the first year of integration, but that was normal for me and I just started meeting people naturally."

Years later, Herman Wright Sr. retired, returned to the area, became a successful business leader and served on the JISD school board 17 years.

ABOVE RIGHT: Herman Wright Jr. asks cemetery association members to help record the history of The Long Black Line. Newsboy photos/ Charles Kerr

Herman Wright Jr. followed in his father's footsteps with service in the military, followed by years hopscotching the country, building a successful career.

"But this (his family farm) was always my center, a place I could come home to," Wright said. "So much is missing from most people's lives. But here I have become prayerful, I have learned to depend on something besides my own strength."

The Long Black Line

The documentary that Wright Jr. will show at the Boomtown Film Festival is something he began as a tribute to his father, his grandparents and the long black line of ancestors who founded freedom colonies all over the south after the Civil War.

What Wright found as he began looking for the history of these communities is that, for the most part, it doesn't exist. Books about early settlers ignored the freedom colonies, and the few photos and records that exist have not been well preserved.

CONFERENCE A CHAMPS, 1962- the old Mt. Union basketball team beat much bigger schools through determination and love of the game.The caption on the smaller inset photo reads champs William Roseman, Robert Wright, James R.Thomas, Pervis Roseman, Odis Booker,Albert Breed, Clarence Thomas Jr., Clifford Booker, and Raymond Blueitt, plus coach Brady Beauregard and bus driver Jesse Samuels.

Wright has helped create a website, www.thelongblackline. org not only to find and document this legacy before it is lost, but also for other communities to use as a template for preserving their histories.

His organization gave Jasper Junior High School a grant for video recording equipment, so that Diane Pace's history classes could interview elders in Jasper County and capture the oral history of how life was in the early days of East Texas.

The students have created a website (http://jewelsofjasper. org/) that is still a work in progress, according to Pace. Although plagued by technical difficulties, the students have photos, a virtual museum, the history of the Rosenwald Schools, and photos from many cemeteries.

Rosenwald Schools

The Rosenwald schools are another little-known story from the days of segregation. Julius Rosenwald was a Jewish immigrant who was one of the founders of Sears, Roebuck and Co. He used his fortune to help remedy what he saw as one of America's most serious problems, the lack of proper educational facilities for black children in the South.

The Rosenwald Fund eventually built 5,000 schools and teachers' home and shop buildings across 15 states. Most of those schools closed when integration came, and the buildings were lost to time for almost half a century.

Now the National Trust for Historic Preservation has listed these Rosenwald schools as endangered historic places in America and is trying to identify, preserve and restore them to community use in a variety of ways.

Cemeteries, churches,

schools, and land

Wright has found there are four pillars that define a freedom colony, those communities that sprang up all over the south after emancipation.

"It is cemeteries, churchs, schools and land," Wright told the gathering at the Magnolia Springs cemetery association meeting recently.

That association draws not only the local people who still attend the Magnolia Springs COGIC, but also members who have "graduated" to careers in cities like Houston and Dallas but still want to remain involved with their family lands.

The tombstones in the 150-year-old cemetery are often the only clues to their history, slim reminders of the time when Bevilport and the Neches River were the bustling foundations of commerce for Jasper County.

Wright said since he founded the LBL, he received calls and emails from people all over the country trying to find out about their ancestors.

"Sometimes I can tell people yes, there is a tombstone in this cemetery and you can't believe how much that means to them," Wright said.

He says there are probably less than five percent who can trace their lineage back to a grave, to a place, and that gives people such a sense of empowerment to know where their came from.

"In a sense, this cemetery is our Ellis Island, it's where we stepped into the scene as Americans, and people who owned land and had a place," Wright said. "If you talk to European immigrants, they know about their family after they came to America, but before coming through Ellis Island they don't really know much."

The land around Mt. Union was deeded to several black families who have kept their land through generations, and whose children still come home for church reunions. The cemetery was recently designated a Historic Texas Cemetery. The school in Mt. Union is but a memory, but two other Rosenwald schools in Jasper County still stand.

Beginnings

Wright's documentary is only the first of what he hopes will be a triology. But beyond that, he hopes that project will be template for other communities, black and white, to preserve their history in incorporate it into the curriculm of schools, so that students can participate and learn, not just from books, but by participation in the research of their own history.

"We are particularly interested in any story regarding their cemetery, historic churches, schools and land with deed going back to the 1800's," Wright said. "We have a start with the Dixie, Huff Creek, Rock Hill and Magnolia Springs/Mt.Union communities (but) there are so many of these historic communities within The Jasper Newsboy's readership."

He asks that people send information to info@thelongblackline. org.