Kevin Willmott and the Free State Festival

Today on KPR presents it's a sneak peek at the free state film festival. I'm Kay McIntyre, the festival kicks off June 21st with a week of indie films. One of those films is the 24th, directed by Laurence's own Kevin Wilmot. Kevin, it is great to see you. Yeah, great to be with you Kay. On a personal note, Kevin, you were one of my very first remote work-at-home interviews back in the very early days of the pandemic, and it was an interview that was fraught with all kinds of technical issues and glitches, and we powered through, and you were such a good sport about it. But I have to say, more than a year later, you are my very first in-studio back at KPR interview, and it is so good to be here. Amen, and it's good to be getting back to normal. It's just a huge deal for everybody, I know.

Or at least normal-ish. Normal-ish. I'll take normal-ish. Yeah. Yeah. So the 24th will be featured at the Dole Institute of Politics on June 26th at a special drive-in screening. So will this be like a drive-in at the old days? I think so, I think, you know, they'll probably have a, you know, I haven't talked to them about the details, really, but I think it's kind of like the drive-in, you know, it'll be a big screen, and you kind of can be in your car, or, you know, so I've never had a movie at the drive-in before, so this is a super cool thing for me. I think people should, you know, we'll have a great time. I'm sure it will be. Yeah. So 24th, take us back to the summer of 1917 and set the stage for us. Well, the 24th is about the 24th Infantry Division, which was, they were one of the groups that were called the Buffalo Socials, and they were sent to Houston, Texas in 1917 to

guard the construction of something called Camp Logan, and Camp Logan was a camp that was designed to train soldiers to go to World War I. And so they sent the 700 black troops to Houston, Texas, and these guys had been, you know, they had been up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt, they had fought in the Philippines, some of them had been in Mexico fighting Pancho Villa. And so these guys were, especially the ones that had been overseas, some of them really had tasted, you know, real kind of respect, and the certain degree of kind of being treated like you were equal, certainly overseas, that was always better for them overseas, and in some ways. And so they had been in New Mexico before, they went to Houston, and in New Mexico was much better than Houston was as well.

So they go to Houston, and it's the really, the big constructions of segregation is starting is really happening there. I mean, this is, this is, you know, you know, it's really Woodrow Wilson that signs off on segregation, as he segregationed Washington DC, and so segregation is just now becoming the thing, and it's starting to sweep the country. And so these guys, a lot of it was always kind of unofficial segregation, you know, folks would just say, you can't come here, you can't do that. But now it's becoming the law of the city, the law of the state, the law of the land really, especially in the south. And so these guys go to Houston and run into segregation, and I always like to tell folks segregation is not just, you know, you can't sit at the front of the bus, you can't go to the trolley car, whatever, segregation is really violence. I think, think of segregation as violence, because violence always accompanies segregation. And that's what happened.

They go to Houston, and they run into the segregation, and they're brutalized by the Houston police force. Kevin, how did you first become aware of the story of the 24th? Well, you know, I'm a, I'm a history nerd, and there was a book called The Black West that I read 40 years ago, you know, or more. And it had the photograph of the trial of the 24th imagery. And in that photograph, it said, the largest murder trial in American history. And I'm going like, holy, moly, you know, I don't know, I've never heard any of this. And I was, you know, I was always been a black history guy from way back. And I never heard anything about the largest murder trial in American history. And so I looked into it and, and researched the story, and there was really kind of one book about it. And so it was kind of a hidden, a hidden buried kind of piece of our history. And, but I thought that that photograph is really what got me, because that photograph,

you just really, I mean, growing up in Johnson City, I grew up with guys from the Buffalo soldiers. And they were in the neighborhood. And so you saw people's faces in that photograph that you really knew. And, and you just felt like, the more I read about their story, the more I felt like their story really should be told, that, that we should know it from a history point of view, but also we should know it from, hopefully, an emotional reality point of view. I'm visiting with Kevin Wilmot. He's the director and co-writer of the 24th. One of the films that's being featured at the Free State Festival. Kevin, I don't want to get into any spoilers, so I don't want to get too much into the plot here, but, but give us a quick overview of what happens to the 24th as they go from segregated Houston to the largest murder trial. Yeah, well, you know, the Houston police force was just a brutal bunch of folks. And they were, they brutalized everybody, not just black folks, he brutalized everybody.

And there's a song that Lead Billy has, you know, it's called Midnight Special, a very famous song. And in that song, he says, if you, you never want to go to Houston, if you go to Houston, you better walk right, you better not hustle, you better not fight. And he kind of references the Houston police force in the song. And so Houston had this legendary kind of notorious reputation for brutalizing folks. And so, you know, these 700 black soldiers show up in Houston, Texas. And so they march into the city and white Houstonians are going holy, you know, this is not good. And part of it is just the uniform and the pride that kind of goes with being a soldier. And so these guys, this is, you know, there's only two or three different jobs that black folks can get at this time that kind of gives you any kind of status in society. One's a Pullman Porter.

The other one of the others is the being a soldier. And so these guys march into Houston and the white Houstonians immediately kind of see them as a huge threat. And the police go after them on any number of violations of anything. And one of the big violations was, you know, the trolley cars. And some of the guys would not sit in the back and when they refused, these guys were beaten. And so these guys were being beaten all the time. And there was one soldier, his real name is Baltimore. We changed his name to Boston in the film. And he was brutalized and the word got back. He was like the heart of the regiment. And, you know, and he was an MP and his job was to try to protect the soldiers when he went to town.

But they would not give the black MP's side arms, they could only have Billy clubs. And so the police go after Boston in the film and try to kill him. And the word gets back that he's been killed and problems ensue because of that. Let's talk about the actor that plays William Boston. He's played by K.U. graduate, trade buyers, and he's perfect in that role. It's a fabulous role, but also he is perfect in it. Tell me about Trey. Well, he was one of my students at K.U. And I had, I wrote a script about 20 years ago or more and yeah, it took me that long to make this film. No one wants to make these kind of movies. And I told him then I said, man, you would be great for Boston. And he agreed. And I think I was working on black clansmen at the time.

And he was in my film destination, Planet Negro, and he's in Jay Hawkers. And we wanted to work on something together. And I said, man, I've been wanting to go back and rewrite the 24 film, but I'm busy right now. You know, I want to bring the love interest into it more and there was something. And so I said, you take it, you go, you go write it, and when I get free, we'll get back and we'll work on it together. And he did a great job of doing everything I was thinking about and more. And so it's always great when you kind of know the actor, you are going to have to play your lead part. And so we really, really fashioned it for, for tray. And you know, he's just a really terrific actor. And I think he just really knocks it out of the park. Talked to me about that character of, of private, then corporal William Boston, the character and how the transformation of him over the course of the film.

Well, the thing that I always was trying to bring to the story of this. And this is the fictional part that I kind of train, I kind of made up to really, you know, illustrate kind of the world that's going on at this time. And Boston's character is, he's educated. He's been educated overseas, kind of like Debbie B DeBoys. You know, you go, you know, he goes to Berlin and gets an education. In this case, Boston goes to France and gets an education. And he's, he's, he goes to France because his, his parents were, were killed in the Atlanta riot of 1902, I believe it is. And, and but they were educated kind of folks, they had gotten educated after slavery and from the Friedman's Bureau and they were teachers and then, and then, and then these riots are, you know, they call them riots and more like massacres, just like the Tulsa riot.

It's really a massacre. So these massacres are happening, happening from about 1880 to the 1930s, really. And so his parents are killed and he's kind of their, their, their friends send him overseas to be educated. And, and the struggle with that is something that, that, that DeBoys talked about, about Tunis. And a lot of my movies deal with Tunis and Tunis is the dilemma of being black and being an American. And you know, that's, you know, he called it two warring faction, factors, factions in one dark body. And you're, the struggle, they're both kind of pulling you different directions. So he really comes back to America to kind of reconnect to his blackness, really. You know, he, he could have, you know, he's educated, he's overseas, you know, blacks would go overseas and, and, and become, you know, and, and become successful because racism is a lot less there.

And so he really comes back because he specifically wants to connect with his blackness. And he feels like he's lost part of it being overseas. And, and so he joins the military, even though he's an educated guy, he joins the military like just a regular grunt, so he can really connect with the people again. And, and he hopes to, as he says, he hopes to kind of uplift the race in the, in the process. And, and you see kind of the, the full spectrum of black kind of characters at that time, you know, you know, you know, you've got a, you know, angry guy with with Walker, you know, you've got probably little education, it's been in trouble with the law. You've got guys like Lucky who are uneducated southern boys that this is a huge opportunity for them. So you've got, you've got the kind of full spectrum in the squad there. And, and so that's, that's that kind of, Baltimore is dropped in the middle of that. And, and, and he has this huge effect on kind of everybody in the, in the, in the world

of the 24, including the sergeant, Sergeant Hayes, who is a guy who's kind of the best illustration of what the 24 is. I mean, he's a, he's a, you know, great soldier, been up San Juan, he'll tell you Roosevelt, it's got the scars to prove it. But he's had to kind of bury his blackness because of that's just the way it works, right? I mean, that's, he's a sergeant and he's the first sergeant, which is, what they call in the top sergeant, he's the, he's the head guy really, he's the guy that really makes everything work and, and has that respect. But, you know, he can't even look a white man in the eye. And so there's a lot of complicated stuff going on here racially and, and individually and personality wise. And he kind of, you know, Boston runs into a young woman Marie who's kind of the face of a black Houston and, um, at that time and falls in love with her and, and becomes,

it all becomes really complicated. I'm visiting with Kevin Wilmot, he's the director of the 24th, which is being featured at the Free State Film Festival on June 26th. Kevin, the film starts out with this line. New boys have dishonored our nation. Talk to me about the use of the term boys. Well, that's, that's always been, um, a deep source of pain for black men. These guys are men who have, are veterans, many of them and, uh, and it's, you know, it's a racist put down to call you a boy and, and everybody, at this point, everybody knows it. You know, this is, this is that transition from slavery to, to the post-slavery world. And so being, being a man and with all of that, what that means, especially again, this

is, this is, you know, before Gandhi and before King and before any notions of nonviolence. And being a man is often connected to standing up for yourself and to certainly defending your home and your family and your loved ones. That's, that's, that's a big part of being a man at this time. And, um, so, so the fact that, that, uh, we open with that, I mean, so much of what the movie is about is about this quest and, and desire and, and fight for, for manhood. I'm visiting with Kevin Wilmot about his film, The 24th. Kevin talked to me about the relationship between Boston and his commanding officer, Colonel Charles Norton, who's played by Thomas Hayden Church. Yes. Um, you know, um, I train, I both, um, you know, you know, we'd love this character of Newman, Colonel Newman.

And Thomas Hayden Church is a great job of playing in the film. And, uh, he's based on a real guy that we kind of then took and gave him a whole life that did not really exist and, uh, and the role he plays within the story is not kind of fact-based, but it is fact-based. Um, you know, what I often do in Twins and Stories is take, um, elements that are just, you know, true in terms of general truth of a situation. And then you take that and you apply it to a character that, that you need a better background and more characteristics with, a better, better recent to exist in a film. And that's what I did with Newman's character. And, you know, he's a, he's a, a good guy. He's a liberal guy who, uh, wants to, you know, he's the commander of the 24th. I think he's probably learned from, from commanding black soldiers, um, you know, the guy that

was the first commanding, uh, officer of a black soldier's grirson, he was a, he was a guy like that who nobody really wanted black soldiers because it was kind of a demotion. But, uh, but the smart guys, um, embraced it and learned from it and grew from it. And that's the case with Newman. And so, you know, he's, you know, he's upset about the treatment of these guys in Houston. You know, the 24 of being brutalized, he's upset about, he's trying to deal with it. But the war department doesn't care. And these guys, they, they don't care about these soldiers. They don't care that they're being brutalized and, and, and, and he's also got a deal with Houston and the demands of the city saying where you can't give those guys sight arms and, you know, we don't want black people all around guns here. And so, uh, he's in a really tough situation and him and, uh, and Boston really create a bond between each other because, you know, he's, he's not threatened by Boston's education.

He's not threatened by the fact that he's probably even smarter than him, uh, and, and he sees him as, you know, a great, you know, opportunity to really advance a black soldier, maybe to, you know, really high heights. I mean, he could maybe become a general, something one day. And so, he sees, so he sees, and I think he sees him a little bit as a son too, you know. Uh, and, uh, and he's an ally. He's a really good, he's not a white savior. And, and, and there were no white sabers in, in the story because, uh, that's the thing about movies that, that stereotype kind of happens. I had a producer tell me one time, he said, I don't believe white people want to see movies where all the white people are bad. And I, and I didn't tell him this because I was working for him at the time, but I never forgot what he said.

And I feel that the white people that I know, that I want to, you know, serve as a storyteller too, I think they know sometimes there's not a good white person in the room historically. And that's okay. And we shouldn't lie about that, to make an audience feel better, you know. And so the case here is that he's an ally, but he, but he can't really save the day. And it's funny because we had a hard time finding an actor to play the part. And I think it was because a lot of guys want the part where they get to save the day. And, and, and that's a problem within film. And that's been a problem within film for a long time. But when you tell a black historical story or any kind of history, historical story dealing with race, it's important not to make the audience feel better for the sake of just making them feel better.

I mean, history is too important to make people comfortable, you know, we have to deal with the, the harsh realities that this is our story. This is the American story. And a lot of times it's not pretty. And, and, but is it, is it, you know, do people want to see movies like this? Well, probably they don't run down the street to see a movie like this, probably not. But is a movie like this? I think it's a salvation of the country, especially now. I mean, you see people not wanting us to tell, do you even teach our history in school now? They don't want you to know this history. And if you're going to live in a multi-racial democracy, you have to know each other's story. I mean, for me, when I made the only good Indian, I didn't know the story. Even though I live in Lawrence, Kansas, I didn't know the story of boarding schools. I didn't know how Native Americans were treated. I didn't know any of that.

No one taught me that in school. So it's no different than the white people now to say, I didn't know about Tulsa. This is horrible. Why didn't I know about Tulsa? They didn't tell us any of this stuff. But you can't understand what a Native American feels or believes or their experience if you don't know the story of the boarding schools. And you really can't understand the black experience if we don't unpack, especially not just slavery. Obviously, that's something that we've kind of least talked about. But this story after slavery, this period after slavery from the 1870s to the 1930s, that may be the most defining part of our history in terms of now. When I see January 6th, I see the mob that marched on Tulsa. That's the mob that marched on Tulsa and basically when the massacre, the attack on Houston happens because right before these guys were sent to Houston, the 24th was sent to Houston,

there was the East St. Louis riot. And again, it was a call of riots, it's really a massacre. And one of the stories, one of our characters in the film, Big Joe, he's from that town. He talks about that in the film. And so white mobs were attacking black communities all the time during this period. And Josephine Baker is in East St. Louis and that's why she leaves the country and goes to Europe and becomes a star. She was in that riot in East St. Louis. And so those events were so defining for all huge numbers of people in the country. I mean, the black migration happens because of these kind of things. And so, you know, that to me is why I try to tell these stories. And I think my job is to make them as entertaining as possible. But they're difficult stories, they're challenging stories.

I mean, I don't think they're not entertaining. Some people like black and white kind of feel like when we tell these difficult stories, they kind of want to turn away from it. And I just kind of believe that it's too important to do that. And I think January 6th tells us what happens when you don't face the realities of the challenges of democracy, you know, it leads to at least a fascist. And these guys were basically black folks lived in fascism in the United States until the 1960s. I'm visiting with Kevin Wilmot. He's the director of the 24th, which is being featured at the Free State Film Festival. Kevin, how is the 24th similar and different from the other films you've made? Well, you know, I think each of my films, you know, often they deal with history.

But some are funny and some are satirical and some are, you know, very serious. And this one, this was my biggest budget film I've ever had to work with. We shot in 18 days, which I'm very, very proud of. It was a big budget film, but not a big enough budget film to do what we tried to do with the film, which I think worked out amazingly really well. We shot it in North Carolina. And it is probably the best example of the stories I've wanted to tell for a long time in terms of the scale of this period. You know, I think this period we've been talking about is so critical to understanding now. And so in that sense, I think you'll see a lot of the Kevin Wilmot, you know, elements that you see in all my films, certainly some of the actors

or some of my buddies that are in a lot of other films. But I think this was probably the most challengingly dramatic film I've made. You know, I think, you know, it delivers a real punch, I think. And that's the part of it I'm really proud of. And I think it's, it has to deliver that punch because of what happened. You know, I don't, we're not going to give it away. But, you know, obviously, you know, this led to the largest murder trial in American history. And, and black folks like within Tulsa, black folks fought back in these places. I mean, people, they were massacres, but black people didn't just lay down and a lot of themselves to be murdered. Black people fought back and, and that's the thing to, that's difficult about this film because, you know, Gandhi doesn't show up with nonviolence until the thirties.

This is 1917. So there's no, you know, there's, and these are soldiers. These, they're, they're trained to fight. They're trained when people attack you, you attack back. And, you know, we, we created the country based in, you know, taxation without representation. No one was being massacred here in the United States. We just decided, don't, I don't want you to tax me and I don't have some representation. So I'm going to get my musket and we're going to have it out, dude. So it's not like, you know, we, we created America out of somebody with genocide in folks or something. So you know, fighting for your rights is something we've always admired in America, except when certain folks do it. And, and that's the challenging part of the film is that these guys were being brutalized in it. And, and when they feel like they're, their main guy, Boston is, is, is, is dead. And, and the paranoia that comes from these white mobs attacking towns all over the place

of they march on the city. And, and I had to kind of, because no one, no one, the, the facts of the case point, I, the conclusion I came to set, to me said that the paranoia they had about the white mob coming, because that's what they heard was going to happen. A white mob was going to come. And the fact this was happening all the time, really led them to, to march on the city. In 150, Buffalo soldiers, black soldiers of the 24th, marched on Houston, Texas, and went after the police. I'm Kay McIntyre visiting with Kevin Wilmot. He's the director of the 24th. One of the many films, which is being screened at the Free State Festival next week. Kevin, I want to read you a quote from the movie that really hit home for me. And it's a short one.

This is our France. Yeah, when the soldiers marched on Houston, they actually said that. This is our France. And, and what that meant was that they, they desperately wanted to fight in France. And W.B. DeBoys had a thing called close ranks, and the idea was that black soldiers would, you, he wanted blacks to serve, and, and, and were one with the notion that you fight over in France, we're making the world safer democracy, and we'll get our rights back home. So that was a big, big push. And these guys, you know, being battle, you know, veterans, and all of that, you know, saw this as this great opportunity to go do that. So they, they desperately wanted to go fight in France. And they, and, and eventually black soldiers did fight in France. The first black soldiers were not allowed to, were volunteers, because they didn't want black soldiers to fight in France, because I think of what we're talking about.

And so they, they were called a Harlem Hell Fighters, and they were volunteers, and they had to fight in French uniforms, because the United States would not give them American uniforms. And so that tells you, and see Woodrow Wilson, I think, knew, because he was a segregation and a racist and a southerner. He knew that the power of including them and all of this, including black soldiers and people like to 24th in all of this, because he did not want to give them that. He didn't want them to, he didn't want them to advance because of the war. And the only way for you to advance as a soldier is you have to go to war, and you have to fight. If you survive, then you, you, you know, you, you advance, you get, you get a higher rank. You know, the company is acknowledged and the battalion and, and platoon and all those things are acknowledged.

And, and, and you're given pride and, and status, and he didn't want to give them that. And, and so when, when they are attacked in Houston, and, and that's the thing, the other part of it that the movie really kind of explores is, is that breaking point that we all have. And that breaking point, I, I was in a riot in high school in Junction City, race right. And I didn't participate in it, but I was, I was there and I was actually on the second floor of the school looking down on it. And these are all my buddies. And the tensions had been building and building and building and eventually something happens and people just break. And it's usually something really stupid or oftentimes is in the case of many different riots. It's something that's, that the facts are not even correct about, which is often the case. But, but by the time people break, it's not about the facts anymore anymore. It's about the buildup of all the stuff and then something stupid happens and people snap.

And that was the thing that blew me away, seeing my friends attack folks, innocent folks. And what, you know, for no rhyme or reason, because when you snap, there's no logic to it. People are saying, why do, why wouldn't people, you know, when there's a riot, why do people burn down their own neighborhood? It's because there's no logic within a riot. You just attack the first thing you see. And so the innocent person walking down the street that happens to be there, when you snap, they get jumped. And it's, it's one of the worst things about, you know, riots is that there's no rhyme or reason or logic to them and often the guilty parties who cause the riots escape as, and as we kind of allude to in the film a bit. And then the last time we spoke, it was in the early days of the pandemic, as I mentioned, it was as your movie to five bloods was being released.

And shortly after that, Chadwick Boseman, who played Norman in the film, passed away tragically, talked to me about him in that role and, and him as an actor in a person. Well, you know, I never got to really hang out with him. You know, I got to see him a few times. And I feel so honored to have to have written a part that he got to play in a film, such a great actor on so many different levels. The fact that he was as ill as he was while he was making the five bloods is just, I mean, it's just heroic. It's just so heroic on such a deep, deep, deep level. And, you know, when he was on the set, he had a little kind of entourage with him. And people thought, oh, this guy might be a little full of himself. And what they didn't know was that there was this doctor, he had, you know, he had the

people he needed. He was dependent upon because he was seriously ill. And, you know, when you got off the plane in Thailand where they shot the five blood, when you got off the plane, that heat would hit you like a brick wall. So he's out there in this hundred degree heat with a, with a pack on with all these clothes on. He's running and jumping and, and he's seriously ill at the time. And just, you know, his dedication to do that is just, it's just, it's just heroic. There's no other word for it. It's just heroic. So, I mean, I just feel very honored to have been part of a project that he was part of. I mean, it's a, you know, the good thing about movies is that they're forever. And we have him, he's gone, but he'll never be gone. He's with us and he's still with us and he will always be with us. And his legend will only grow, you know, as people kind of look at his movies and learn about his story and his dedication to the art of it.

It's, it's just a beautiful thing. I've been visiting with Kevin Wilmot. He's the director among other many films of the 24th, which is being featured at the Free State Film Festival. Kevin, it is great to talk to you. Thank you so much for coming in today. Welcome back. Welcome back to you too. We'll have more KPR presents coming up right after this.