In Black America; The Life Of William Grimes, with Regina Mason and Sean Durant, Part I

From the University of Texas at Austin, K-U-T Radio, this is In Black America. And Catherine was a gifted storyteller who loved to talk about the family history. And of course, she was talking about Cecilia the President and the one little sentence that she gave me, duck in my head. And she told me she said, someone in the family by the last name of Grimes had a connection to the Underground Rero. And she said he was from New Haven, Connecticut. That was just one or two sentences that she gave me. And I thought, my God, the Underground Rero. You know, I'm just learning about American slavery, I'm learning about the Underground Rero. So I knew that was a resistance story. And it was a story that I wanted to hear.

So I remember just asking and Catherine over and over, well tell me more about this Grimes person in the Underground Rero. But she could not give me anymore. That was all she knew. Regina E. Mason, International Speaker, Executive Producer and Author of Life of William Grimes, The Runaway Slave, published by Oxford University Press. Life of William Grimes, The Runaway Slave, is the first fugitive slave narrative in American history. Because Grimes wrote and published his narrative on his own, without a difference to why editors, publisher, or sponsors. His life in the intimacy, candor, and no holds bar realism, unparalleled in the famous anti-bellum slave narratives during that time. Mason, in the same vein as the late Alex Haley, had heard stories about her great, great, great grandfather, William Grimes. Following clues from her aunt, Catherine, she embarked on a 15-year journey. She would later partner with William L. Andrews to publish a new edition of his pioneering work.

In 2017, a documentary is made combining two stories. Mason's journey to discover and trace the steps of her ancestor, and Grimes' story as a slave and his thirst for freedom. I'm Johnny Owens in Jr., and welcome to another edition of In Black America. On this week's program, Gina's Journey, the search for William Grimes, with Sean Durant, and Regina E. Mason, in Black America. William Grimes himself, you know, when he read his narrative, all that he endured in life, the cruelty, the abuse. At every turn that he was reminded that he was nothing, but he never bought into the status quo. That he defied the status quo at every turn, just the fact that he had the notion that he was capable of writing his own story. Without any assistance from white people, speaks to who he was, and how self-assured he was. So his example of perseverance and endurance gave me the will to just carry on and see this project to the end.

Regina E. Mason is a remarkable woman. She spent 15 years of her life researching a life of a great, great, great grandfather, William Grimes. With nothing to go on but a connection to the Underground Railroad, she spent countless hours in libraries reading books, looking at microfilm and census records. Grimes was 10 years old when he was sold away from the arms of his grieving mother to a far off plantation. Here grew up, friendless and motherless, with apparently no surrogate slave family or loved ones to embrace him. No one even to look after him. Grimes was the first person to go through slavery in the South and write about it. This was the first time Father and Slavery were exposed from the perspective of one who had lived it. And he was the first author to write about the harsh realities of the North despite the narrative of his being Effory to Milan. Recently, in Black America, spoke with Sean Durant to produce a director of Gina's journey to search for William Grimes and Regina E. Mason.

Okay, I was born and raised in Oakland, California and I went to elementary school at St. Augustine and went on to public school at Berkeley High School. My roots go deep in California back to North Leicester Statehood in 1850. And part of my being in the Bay Area is the result of the narrative that we're going to talk about and how I discover those roots. There and connected myself to this extraordinary man, William Grimes. I have two daughters, Mary, to my husband for almost 40 years. Out of that process, on that life journey, I worked at the University of California Berkeley. And I fell in love with the libraries there and they were instrumental in helping me uncover this story that your audience is about to hear and to authenticate William Grimes' words.

I was in the right place at the right time to get this story of materialized in a way that had never been done before. I understand. I want to tell our audience that Miss Mason had sent me an email back in 2013 and I had yet to respond to that email until 2019. And that email articulated that she had listened to a podcast that I had produced and it led her to think about her family lineage. And you can take it up from there, Miss Mason? Yes, that podcast that you were talking about was on the subject of Alex Hayley's roots. You all were revisiting his remarkable work and how it changed a nation in terms of our mindset and how we looked at slavery.

It was the first time that slavery was talked about from the vantage point of those who endured it. And I was just, I enjoyed that podcast so much and it made me reach out to you to want to tell my story because it is a story very similar to Alex Hayley's story. And yes, I reached out to you and obviously didn't hear back right away but thank goodness you circled back to it regardless of how many years later and here we are today to tell the story. And at the time, I think it was 2013 when I wrote you and we were in the middle, I believe, of filming Gina's journey to search for William Grimes. And Sean, at that point, how did you and Miss Mason get together?

Well, it more or less started with a family barbecue and finding out that Regina had actually completed the book. And then it continued with being at a book signing and just seeing all the scholars and all the people who were involved and this was right across from Berkeley. And then realizing that that material, her story, William Grimes' story, the book and everything around it and all the research would make an awesome film. And at the time, I was coming around as a filmmaker, I had already produced a film back in 2000 and I had been making music videos at the time. And I was doing a lot of music videos that were on MTV and BT, most of it was hip hop. So I kind of knew my way around production but I hadn't actually directed a feature yet or produced something of this magnitude but I expressed to her that I think this would make a great film.

And she said, well, I don't know how to get a film made and I said, well, I do. And once I kind of spoke those words, we were kind of set on a destiny together to make this film. We were going to get it done, we didn't know where we were going to get the money. And putting together the structure of an independent feature film is so complicated, such a complicated machine, such an expensive art form that it was really just a wild dream. But over the next years, we were able to develop it and put together enough pieces from people who were kind enough to help us out and from our own will to get together and actually after three years of development and do four years of production and somehow through that new journey, we made a film. I understand. Ms. Mason was William Grimes the initial interest or some of your grandparents and aunts and uncles were there initially your thought to research their lives? I encourage you ask that question because William Grimes was not on the radar at all.

But I want to tell you how I became interested in my roots and it started way back in 1971 when I was in the fifth grade. I was given a class assignment. In fact, the whole class was given the same assignment and it was to be an oral report where we were talking about our country of origin and our roots and it was the first time that I had to face slavery front and center because it appeared in my family tree. And up to that point, I had not heard that there were slaves of the family. In fact, nobody talked about it. We talked about other things of the family history that had nothing to do with slavery. For instance, I had always heard about Cecilia Victoria who was a tragedy in the San Francisco Bay area and that she performed to integrated audiences. So I had not expected to hear anything about someone who had been enslaved. My mother, when I sat down to talk to her about the family story, she had told me quite casually that her grandfather, Henry Fuller, had been born a slave and that she knew him.

And that really struck me in a crazy kind of way because here I am, a kid. I had heard about slavery but it was in the abstract. It was those people over there from long ago. It was not in my family history. So when we talked about her grandfather Fuller, I could sense an uneasiness. She told me that he was very tight-lipped about his history. She had never met anyone in his family line and he was just sort of a sad individual in a sense and on top of that very stern. So when we talked about his background, it made me realize how closely I was to connect it to the institution of slavery.

It was just a few generations removed from me. And my thought was, how do I present this to the class? I really did not want to stand up to say that I descended from slaves. Of course, we know there's nothing wrong with that, but imagine a child. This is before Alex Hayley's story came out. So I just didn't process it very well and there were things that she did say that were quite compelling but they just were lost because I couldn't get beyond the inherent complexity of this newly revealed enslaved heritage. But of course, that changed when I did see roots and it made me want to pursue my history. And backing up a little bit of my mother could sense that I was having sort of misgivings about how I was going to present this story.

And she decided to take me to see my aunt Catherine, who was the keeper of the family lore. And Catherine was a gifted storyteller who loved to talk about the family history. And of course, she was talking about Cecilia, the transgender, but one little sentence that she gave me stuck in my head. And she told me she said someone in the family by the last name of Grimes had a connection to the Underground Railroad. And she said he was from New Haven, Connecticut. That was just one or two sentences that she gave me. And I thought, my God, the Underground Railroad, I had, you know, I'm just learning about American slavery, I'm learning about the Underground Railroad. So I knew that was a resistance story. And it was a story that I wanted to hear. I remember just asking Catherine over and over, well, tell me more about Grimes first. And in the Underground Railroad, but she could not give me anymore. That was all she knew.

So fast forward twenty-some years, I'm a young mother of two little girls and married and trying to raise my family. And I thought about this mysterious Grimes person because I had these children that I wanted them to know their family history. But I didn't know much about it. So I began the process of genealogy for them. And for myself, I wanted to see what I could find. And I wanted to see if there was a measure of truth in the story that Catherine had given me. So after, you know, about a year or so of getting records like from the census, vital statistics, and those kinds of things, I realized that records were indeed out there. So I then began to shift my focus on this Grimes character. Could I find him? So I began reading every book I could find on the abolitionist movement and on the Underground Railroad and about American history in general.

And it was kind of crazy because I was getting nowhere, nowhere until one day I happened upon a library book that was due. And it needed to be returned. And I remember summing through it. And I turned to the free New England section of the book because Catherine had said, you know, our roots were from New Haven, Connecticut, and within the first few pages of this book, the Underground Railroad by Charles Bloxon. I find a reference to a William Grimes from Savannah, Georgia, who stowed away on a vessel that brought him to New York City. And while he was in New York, workers from the Underground Railroad directed him on foot to New Haven, Connecticut. So those little three clues just jumped out at me and I had to follow them. And the rest of history, as we can say, because I did definitely make the connection.

So to answer your question in a roundabout way, William Grimes was not on my radar. It was just a project to find my roots and present this my heritage to my children. William Grimes just fell into place. Yeah, I understand. If you're just joining us, I'm Johnny Owens in junior and you're listening to In Black America from KUT Radio and we're speaking with Regina E. Mason. International speaker lecture and author of Life of William Grimes are runaway slave. Now a movie titled Genus Journey, The Search for William Grimes. And also with Sean Durant, producer of the frame, Sean, how did you all go about assembling the concept, which is the unique concept for the movie? So getting to the filming of the actual movie. So it was it was difficult because you're trying to take, you know, William Grimes entire life.

His is enduring in the south. His escaping from the south, his new life in the north and almost losing that and and and having to find a way to maintain that life. And you got to take Regina Mason's life of researching all of this coming upon that finding that their ancestor wrote this book, then going through the book, which he published twice in his life. And then trying to tell that story at the same time. Now you have a 90 minutes approximately movie, but you're trying to tell two people's life story. I'll split it in half and then you have to pick the right moments that are going to tell the story. So it's a lot, you know, I always say that the, the movies like a large commercial for the two incredible long journeys and lives of these two people. So we had to figure out how we can put that all together and get that story out there. I initially was a big fan of documentaries.

But I was also a big fan of narrative dramatic feature films. I knew that I couldn't do both types of films as I started my directing career. And I was a big fan of documentaries, which were becoming popular at the time in 2008, 2009 on television. So my deal was how can I do all of this and knock it out in one movie? And that's when I decided to make it into a documentary. So I could have all the best parts of a documentary, including scholars to speak on the material as well as Regina Mason. But I can also have actors to portray William Grimes to portray the times and what he was actually going through as well as actors to portray Regina Mason and portray her times and her struggles and her arc and her story. So in the movie, I tell both stories in parallel, particularly as Regina finds the book and begins to read the book. We can tell more of William Grimes stories and their stories kind of move, lock step together and come together at the end. But they are separated from, you know, 100 years or so more apart. So that's really the ingredients and kind of the recipe that I put together and working and toiling for four years,

shooting it in the Bay Area and filming it in LA and on location at Savannah, Georgia and Virginia and Connecticut. We were able to put all those pieces together and it just worked out. It came together in a wonderful story that is being well accepted and kind of resonates. But I think it really, really shows, you know, the perseverance and the struggle of William Grimes and what he passed on to Regina Mason and her struggle and her perseverance to then reclaim him and tell the story again to a new audience and it can go well into the future. So we're really proud of it and it came out really well. We did the whole thing from script to screen to now stream. It's on Amazon Prime and it's getting out there to the world and we're really proud of it. I was particularly impressed with the locations. How did you find locations for 18th century? So the locations originally when I started doing the production, I wanted to hire a location scout, the location scout and location managers.

But the people that I would interact with, they would start asking me questions and what to do and then they were picking things and doing things where I was constantly saying no and that's not right, that's not it. So I got to the point finally where I realized that no one was going to get those locations better than me. So I actually went out in the field and I acted as my own location scout and I found that the best way to get historical locations is to actually go to the places where it happened or find historical, historically accurate locations like museums, historical sites, places where people go to do reenactments or their museums. And then just talk to the people and tell them the truth and tell them what you're doing and you'll be surprised if you tell people the truth and you're really honest with them and they see the power what you're doing. And once I showed them Regina's story in her book, they were open to it and we were able to get a lot of locations and use a lot of historically accurate props.

So a lot of what you see in the movie is not fake. I've noticed that. I've noticed that. Yeah, it's actually real. The banding museum out in LA was is a real place and that's a real home and those are those interiors are actually real items in that museum. They were kind enough to let us use that some of the horses, carriages and things like that. So we did a little bit of that. Obviously we filmed some stuff while we were driving from Savannah all the way to Connecticut. We stopped in different locations to do the documentary footage and then we filmed the outside of those actual real location, in Montpelier, where this actually took place. So we had the outside of the real locations and I mixed them with the interiors of some of the locations that were historically accurate in LA and in the Bay Area and we put them all together. And when you edit them together seamlessly with people in awesome costumes, great actors, it just came together to create this world where people could immerse themselves in a life of William Grimes in the 1800s.

Before the life of Regina Mason in the 90s leading into the early 2000s, but we filmed that in its original location in Oakland. So a lot of this, we filmed where it actually happened and then we augmented with some movie magic and it worked out perfectly. Yes it did. How did you all convince Keith David to do the narration? So the narration part came towards it and I originally did the movie with just non-union actors but towards the end, when we kind of did the cut, we realized it needed a final punch and a final push. I had always envisioned having someone with a certain level of power through the narration. I was a big fan of some docu-dramas that were on television. I wanted particularly to call through the wormhole and to start more infreement. And in that particular one, he would do a direct-to-camera talk and he would also narrate reenactments of when he was a kid or other reenactments. And everybody knows he is, quote unquote, the voice of God and he is the biggest narration in movies.

Could we get someone like that? Obviously, if we got it, it would be amazing. We did approach through a connection with my co-producer. We did approach a lot of actors. We approached him, Morgan Freeman, Denzel Washington, Lavar Burton and different people. But the numbers that came back would make you faint. So I had a list. I had a top 10 list and in my top 5, I put Keith David in there. And so my co-producer contacted his agency and they sent it over. And to my astonishment, he came back and was like, I'll do it. And it was more than a reasonable rate, which also made us faint. And the next thing I was out in Hollywood and Melrose actually had his recording studio and directing Keith David in the booth, which was mind-blowing, to say the least. And he was astonished to see me and given my age and what I had done and being an African American male to be directing this film. So that really made him happy when he saw that. He just was really blown away with it. But he blessed the project, came in. He did the most amazing work on it. And it really just elevated Gina's story and Grime's story to a whole new level.

So we will be eternally thankful to him for that. And in every once in a while, I do have talks with them still. And he's just a really good person. And I think he's a studier of history. He's very big in the voiceover world. He's an Emmy-a-warmaning voice actor who's done ton of Ken Burns, documentaries. So he was really into it and this is his thing. So I think he really enjoyed working on this project and we were better for it. I understand. Ms. Mason, honestly, this was labor intense. This is way before Google and everything else. So what gave you that consistent drive to wanting to complete this project? William Grime himself. You know, when you read his narrative, all that he endured in life, the cruelty, the abuse. Right. At every turn that he was reminded that he was nothing. But he never bought into the status quo. In fact, he defied the status quo at every turn.

Just the fact that he had the notion that he was capable of writing his own story without any assistance from white people speaks to who he was and how self assured he was. So his example of perseverance and endurance gave me the will to just carry on and see this project too. Regina E. Mason, international speaker, executive producer and author of Life of William Grime to run away slave, published by Oxford University Press. We will include our conversation on next week's program. If you have questions, comments or suggestions ask your future in Black America programs. Email us at in Black America at kut.org. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Remember to like us on Facebook and to follow us on Twitter.

The views and opinions expressed on this program are not necessary, those of this station or other University of Texas at Austin. You can get previous programs online at kut.org. Until we have the opportunity again for technical producer David Alvarez, I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. Thank you for joining us today. Please join us again next week. CD copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in Black America CDs. KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in Black America CDs, KUT radio, 300 West Dean Keaton Boulevard, Austin, Texas, 78712. This has been a production of KUT radio.