E-mail a friendShola Lynch
airdate February 4, 2005
Shola Lynch learned the art of making documentaries on the job. She worked with Ken Burns on the award-winning Frank Lloyd Wright and JAZZ. She also worked on the Emmy Award winning HBO Sports documentary Do You Believe in Miracles? Raised in New York City, Lynch starred on Sesame Street as a child and was a world-class track athlete - who still holds records. She makes her directorial debut with CHISHOLM '72, about Shirley Chisholm, the first woman of any color to mount a serious campaign for the American presidency.
Shola Lynch
Tavis: It is fitting that Shola Lynch's work will be seen here on PBS this Monday night. Why? Because she began her career on the network, PBS, at the age of 2 as a regular on 'Sesame Street.' Go, Shola.
Shola Lynch: Ha ha ha!
Tavis: See? Good things can happen when you start on 'Sesame Street.'
Lynch: I got street cred. I got street cred.
Tavis: She left 'Sesame Street,' grew up, went on to become a track star at the University of Texas before getting into documentary filmmaking, though. Her latest project now is 'Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed.' It marks her directorial debut. The film premieres, as I mentioned, here on PBS this coming Monday, February the 7th. Here now, a scene from 'Chisholm '72: Unbought and Unbossed.'
Shirley Chisholm: Why is it constantly practiced anyway? When politicians come out from every corner to get the most important thing you have, your vote, why is it that it has to always be white males, white males, white males, white males?
Tavis: Shola, a long way from 'Sesame Street.'
Lynch: Yes, yes, yes.
Tavis: Congratulations on the piece, first of all.
Lynch: Thank you very much.
Tavis: Um, how sad was it that we lost Shirley Chisholm just, I mean literally, the first day of the year?
Lynch: Uh, you know, it was very sad, but her health was starting to deteriorate, and so in some ways, I think she was looking for peace. It's very hard for an independent lady such as Shirley Chisholm to be so dependent on other people, and I think her health was the key there.
Tavis: Before I get to the piece, did you spend much time with her in putting this together?
Lynch: Yeah, I courted her. Got her to--I needed her to participate in it. I wanted her to help tell the story, and I'd say I first contacted her in about 2000 and interviewed her in 2003 for this piece, but had several conversations with her throughout 2001, '02, '03, leading up.
Tavis: This is an inside-the-filmmaker's-brain kind of conversation, or question I should say, but tell me, before I get more into the piece, the technique you decided to employ. When I speak to documentarians who come on this show, everybody decides to use a different style, a different format to tell the story. So on Monday night, what are we gonna see? How did you decide to tell this story?
Lynch: Hoo...well, I wanted to match the energy and the charisma of this woman, and so I used some techniques from the seventies. First of all, there's no narration. I interview her, I interview people who worked with her, people who opposed her, and they tell you the story. So it's like listening in to older folks have their conversation, you know? And, um, some of the techniques are also from the seventies like split-screen, graphics stuff, but the point is not to detract from the story, but to add to the spirit and energy of it.
Tavis: Um, Shirley Chisholm, when she ran in '72 for the White House, she, with all due respect, had to know that she would not win that campaign. Why run? What was her point in running?
Lynch: Uh, well, you know, often people say, "Well, it was just symbolic," 'cause when you look at the news footage, it's like George McGovern cut close, Hubert Humphrey, and then you get to this woman, and it's this woman with her hair and her glasses and her suits, and she's tellin' it like it is, you know? So that's one part, but there were historical circumstances. The voting age had changed from 21 to 18.
Tavis: For the first time.
Lynch: For the first time, first election. That was 10 million new voters. There's not one Democratic front-runner, no strong front-runner, and I think if Bobby Kennedy, who had been killed in '68, were still around, that might have been different. So there are 13 candidates in the race. The other issue was the civil rights acts in the mid-sixties were now actually being implemented. That's why she could be running in congress. That's also why so many African-Americans as a group were getting involved in civic participation again. And, as well, the women's movement was getting involved as a group. And then, this is what I discovered is she actually had a viable political strategy. And the strategy was, listen, the nominee was decided at the convention. She knew if she ran in enough primaries, she won delegate votes, the rules were in almost every primary, except California and a few winner-take-all states, if you ran, won 2%, 5% of the vote--she won as much as 9%--you won delegates. So in a close race, at that convention between Muskie or Humphrey or George McGovern, and George McGovern later became--he became the nominee--her delegate votes might be--
Tavis: She could swing it, yeah.
Lynch: Exactly. So instead of going, "Well, you know what? I think you need to support civil rights issues and progressive causes and women's rights issues," she would say, "You want my delegates? All right, let's talk." She wanted to have leverage or currency. Didn't turn out that way.
Tavis: Yeah. We, of course--we, of course, remember, our generation, Jesse Jackson running in '84 and '88. We, of course, all remember Al Sharpton running this time around. Take me back, though, and give me a sense of how black folk responded to her back in '72. Black people specifically.
Lynch: Black people specifically. Well, you know, I'd say regular black folks really responded to her. Um, for instance, Barbara Lee, who's in congress--
Tavis: You got to explain what regular black folk are. I'm not sure I quite--ha ha! Am I a regular Negro? I mean, what--what does that mean?
Lynch: OK, let me start from the top and work my way down. The black political establishment, right? The men who were, for the most part were like, "OK, you can go ahead and do that, but we have this other agenda that we need to--"
Tavis: I mean, there weren't very many people in the establishment then, were there? How many black men were around?
Lynch: Well, you know, in congress, '68, all these black folks are in there now. I mean, comparatively--
Tavis: 48. You have 48 now, yeah.
Lynch: And it's grown since, but the black political establishment was trying to figure out how to gain leverage within the political system. I mean, and so you had all kinds of folks who were dead set against her, in part because, I think, she was a woman. She was also a very strong personality. Ha ha ha!
Tavis: To say the least, yeah. That's a nice way of putting it, yeah.
Lynch: But, you know, the Black Panthers supported her. And they asked, you know--she was criticized for that. She said, well, a whole lot of y'all aren't gonna vote for me anyhow, and here are these people who are coming back home to electoral politics because in the early seventies, they're organizing grass-roots campaigns to get people registered and out voting, you know? And they're coming back to the political process, as opposed to fighting from the outside. Um, and we have a great scene in the movie about the Black Panthers and their support. And then you had regular--like Barbara Lee was a young college student, welfare mother, several kids, and she wasn't involved in politics. She saw Mrs. Chisholm speak and said, "Oh, my gosh. Now, there's a politician I can get behind, who's going to speak clearly and confidently and have a great integrity and support progressive issues." "Unbought and unbossed" she really was. And so, what I mean by regular people are people who are not part of any kind of establishment, whether it's a group or otherwise. There weren't big groups that supported her.
Tavis: Well, you mentioned Barbara Lee, of course. We know who we're talking about. Barbara lee, of course, went on to become a member of congress and was the only member of congress to vote against George Bush's request initially to finance this war in Iraq.
Lynch: Absolutely.
Tavis: Um, so, yeah, obviously, she did--she didn't just get involved. She ended up in congress like Shirley Chisholm.
Lynch: She went up to Shirley Chisholm after her speech and said, "What can I do?" And Mrs. C. said, "Well, my dear, the first thing you must do is register to vote." And Barbara Lee is like, "Ooh, I hadn't thought about that."
Tavis: Ha ha ha! A good place to start, huh? Yeah. Um, for you as an African-American woman, what--and I know I'm setting myself up here--what were a couple of the lessons that you learned about the--I want to be very delicate here. About the upside or the downside, as it were, of being an independent, unbought, unbossed black woman in America?
Lynch: Well, that's a tough question. I mean, I think for Shirley Chisholm, she had to follow her moral compass. That was just it. And I think for all of us, you know, we--and she also didn't wait for her turn. I mean, Ron Dellums has a great bite in the film where he said, you know, she was asserting her right to be there. She wasn't demanding it because when you demand, you give somebody else the power to deny you. She wasn't waiting for somebody to say, "It's your turn." She took opportunities that were out there in front of us, and I think that when you're talking about the ranking of race and gender, women of color are usually at the bottom, and if we're waiting for somebody else to give us permission, we're gonna be waiting a whole heck of a long time, and what I admire about her is that she didn't wait. She created opportunities for herself, created space for herself, and I think that's a lesson that all of us could learn, regardless of race and gender, and I think it's why this story is a good one because it represents the quintessentially American spirit of, "I'm gonna do it." Ha ha ha!
Tavis: Did her being from the islands have anything to do with the way she was received or not received as it were, specifically by African-Americans?
Lynch: Well, I think there were a lot of African-Americans in the sixties and seventies who had roots in the West Indies. What the difference for her was is that her early education--she was born in the U.S., but her early education was in Barbados. Strict British education. It was reading, writing, and arithmetic, and, boy, there wasn't playtime, so when she came back to the states at the age of 11, she was already invested in as a smart individual. That whole race and gender thing wasn't put on her yet. Does that make any sense?
Tavis: Makes a great deal of sense, um, as will this entire piece. "Unbought and unbossed" was her moniker. The piece is called 'Chisholm '72.' It premieres Monday night here on PBS, so for more information about the piece--first of all, check it out, but for more information about it, log on to our web site at PBS.org. Shola. Nice to have you on.
Lynch: Thank you very much.
Tavis: Great work, by the way. Up next on this program, talented musician Brian McKnight. A conversation and a special performance from Mr. McKnight, so stay with us.
Back to February 4, 2005