Bess Hubbard, Director

 

Bess Hubbard is a two-time Emmy award winning producer with a passion for bringing stories of African American history to life through documentary. She brings ten years of television producing, writing and directing experience to this passion project. Her style is to draw the viewer intimately into moments from the past.  Bess is from New York and lives in Los Angeles, California.

 

Rebecca Kriegel, Editor

 

Rebecca Kriegel, 21, is a talented, self-taught editor from Bozeman, Montana, with a passion for the history of oppressed peoples, especially the history of the Jewish holocaust in World War II Europe, and African slavery in the United States. She is also an aspiring fitness trainer with plans to become a medical doctor dedicated to holistic wellness, and lives in Los Angeles. 



 

About SlaveVoices

 

In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration sent people across the country to interview and record the stories of those who had lived through slavery.  Many of their stories were captured as audio recordings, and some as written transcripts.  These recordings, and accompanying photographs, are archived in the Library of Congress.

 

In 1998, a radio documentary was produced using these recordings and transcripts called, “Remembering Slavery: African Americans Talk About Their Personal Experiences of Slavery and Freedom,” which was also a companion book. This radio documentary, produced by Smithsonian Productions, was excerpted to produce this video. The book by the same title was published by The New Press in conjunction with the Library of Congress, and edited by Ira Berlin, Marc Favreau, and Steven F. Miller.  The music used in this video was composed by Rachel Portman for the motion picture Beloved starring Oprah Winfrey, which also premiered in 1998.

 

This video focuses on the story of former slave Robert Glenn, which is narrated by legendary actor James Earl Jones. Glenn tells the story of the day he was sold away from his parents as a child ...

 

… So much of what I know of black history I learned, not in school, but on the job in television. As a production assistant at a local PBS station, I’d see press releases cross the news desk about people like the Tuskegee Airmen and the event they were holding at the Santa Monica Airport, or read an LA Times Magazine cover article featuring Rev. James Lawson, a Los Angeles pastor who was also Martin Luther King, Jr’s chief architect of the strategy of nonviolent protest. 

 

I had the opportunity to meet these people and talk to them! I was in the presence of the living legends of history! And it stirred a profound desire in me to transfer the awe and wonder I felt to others by telling their stories.  When I first discovered “Remembering Slavery” I begged my mother to gift me the book and radio documentary box set for my birthday. And I cherished it.

 

… This video is a humble effort to return to my first love in the hope of igniting that same feeling of awe and wonder in you …

 

Peace.

 

Bess