 and working as a journalist at the time, so very interested in non-fiction media and also had aspirations to become a documentary filmmaker. And I was just wandering around, as I say, like not too far from where I lived and I ran across the stone marker, the commemorating Alexandria as the site of the nation's first sit-in in 1939. And, you know, like probably most Americans, at least at that time outside of Alexandria, you know, I thought the sit-in movement began, you know, in the South in the 1960s with a bunch of lunch counter protests, right? So I was kind of blown away by that fact. So all this was kind of swirling in my head and then one day it just kind of popped in my head, this really should be a documentary, this should be a story that should get out to a wider audience. And it's kind of what launched me on it. Yeah, well, it just seemed, you know, pretty obvious that if I was going to embark on this project, I had to collaborate with the center, you know, that's the repository of then and now of black history and African-American history like in Alexandria. So I just literally walked in one day and Audrey and Lewis Hicks, who was the director at the time, were here and I told him I was just, you know, smitten with this story and I really thought it should be a documentary. And I guess I was just passionate and persuasive enough that they agreed to collaborate with any, you know, we got it done. And they were, to put it short, you know, invaluable resources throughout the whole process. You know, they steered me towards all the research sites that I needed to go to to get background on it, helped me with, you know, helped connect me to folks that I needed to interview for the project, helped connect me to images for it as well. So they were, it just couldn't have been done without them. That was 1998. So that was the spring of 1998. So in August of 1999, that was the 60th anniversary of the Senate. I think I may be skipping a head here, but we actually released, you know, the documentary shortly after that 60th anniversary. There were some politics, you know, swirling around it as well because it was the 250th anniversary of Alexandria. And Alexandria is a city, you know, that's mostly been known for celebrating its white history throughout its history. I can't really speak for the last, you know, quarter century as well, but there was, you know, definitely a sentiment in the city at the time that something needed to be done, you know, to chronicle the African American history, you know, as well. So there were some of that, you know, politics kind of, you know, fueling the drive to get it done at that time. So some of, you know, the funding for the project came out of my own pocket. I also, you know, very generously received a grant from the Office of Historic Alexandria. So that actually helped, you know, underwrite a lot of the production and post-production costs of it. Yeah, that's an interesting story. I think you asked, like, what one of the roadblocks was, you know, in getting it done. And probably the most significant one was the one remaining participant, you know, the one living participant in the sit-in was Buddy Evans, right? And he was still alive in the summer of 1999 and we were gonna do an interview with him. So my co-director, Eddie Becker, and I showed up at his house. He was in Washington, living in D.C. at the time in the summer of 1999. And one of his family members came to the door and told us he had had a stroke, you know, the day before. Yeah, so that was very sad news, you know, for his family. Also sad news, you know, for the film, you know, because I was kind of relying on him to kind of tell the story, at least, you know, from a contemporary standpoint. So I thought the project, frankly, might be sunk, you know, at that point. But I talked to Audrey and she saved our bacon. She, and you'll have to confirm this with her, I think she was an undergrad at University of Virginia and she had a professor there, William Elwood, who had made this wonderful documentary in the 1980s called The Road to Brown. And he went around kind of throughout the South, you know, interviewing all these veterans of the Civil Rights Movement about, you know, the struggle that led to Brown versus Board of Education. And he had hours and hours of footage and included in that with some interviews with Sam Tucker and Buddy Evans and actually Autumn Tucker, Sam's, you know, brother as well. And Audrey connected me to Dr. Elwood and he just said, yeah, sure, you can have whatever you want from the collection. So Audrey and Dr. Elwood really saved it. And, you know, if you see the documentary today, you know, that's a lot of his footage that's in there. 80s, yeah. So he did do the, you know, was it the New Kent case. He argued that before the Supreme Court in 1968. And that was the one where, you know, the Southern states had basically been resisting segregation or desegregation for years. And so the Supreme Court kind of pointed a finger at them and said, no, you have to take care of this now. And Tucker was the one that made that argument, for the Supreme Court, you know, especially with everyone that I collaborated with. The people that work with me on the production, post-production, working with, you know, Audrey and Louis and the other historians as well. I would say, you know, the biggest success that always, you know, sort of sticks out in my mind. And I think understandably so, is towards the end of 1999, Audrey might remember the date better than me. I was not there, unfortunately, but the city council of Alexandria had a meeting to name the new elementary school, you know, on the west end of Alexandria. And interestingly, you know, the two names that they were considering were Sam Tucker and Armistead Booth, who was on the high of the courtroom, you know, fighting the litigated case, you know, in 1940 over the sit-in. And they showed the documentary and then afterwards they unanimously voted to name it after Sam Tucker. So, I don't think that was me, but I think, you know, if watching that film helped persuade them, you know, that this was something that needed to be done, I don't know what else I could say. That, you know, is certainly a great success and what I'm most proud of, you know, associated with this film. Yeah, I haven't been there in quite a while, but I did see, I went onto their website this week and that they put up that BLM mural, I should say, recently, a couple months ago, and that's just wonderful. It's wonderful that the kids there are, you know, having a sense of like social justice, like instilled at them at that age, you know, for sure. Better recollection. So, I knew, you know, we had our first screening at the Resource Center in 1999, and then, you know, there were a series of public screenings around the DC area, you know, for maybe like the next year or so. It did screen at a couple of festivals, including the Rosebud Film Festival. I don't know if that's still in existence anymore, but that was in Washington. Won an award there. Years later, it screened at the inaugural Alexandria Film Festival, and I think that's still around. But they, it won like the inaugural, like best documentary award at that festival as well. It aired on a couple of public television outlets. There was an independent public television outlet named WNVC TV and Falls Church, so they aired it in 2000. Also, the PBS affiliate in Pittsburgh aired it as well. And then, later in 2000, it got picked up for distribution by California News Reel, which is a big catalog and distributor of films to the education market, I would say primarily. I actually don't know if there's still any existence, but they, so they had, for about a decade, exclusive distribution rights on it, but we did have like a carve out in our deal so that the Resource Center could sell its own copies of the DVD as well. But having that deal sort of limited somewhat what I could do with it at that point. But yeah, it got out quite a bit. I don't know that it really took the world by storm, but it's a story that continues to fascinate in this area and resonate as well. It was, so when we made the film, we shot it like all the interviews on many DVDs. I don't know what hell it shot his films on, but we eventually mastered on a format called BetaCam. Yeah, and it's obsolete, you know, I think now, but it's not used anymore, right? But so we still have like a few BetaCam masters of it and that's what we created the DVD copies from. I guess I would, to that question, kind of give sort of like what is a very generic answer that a lot of filmmakers would and that is you just wish you had more money to make it with, to make it, I think it looks good and it's obviously a film that resonates with people, but I look at it sometimes and I think, I wish we had more money if to stage that reenactment sequence. It was a crunch in post-production. We booked some space in a local post house to do it and I wish we'd had more time to do it. My co-director was Eddie Becker and he was also the cinematographer and he was using a Sony and many DV camera to shoot it on, which was fine, but there were better cameras available at that time so it'd been nice to have more money to do it. There was, I don't know that this is a moment that I really regret not having captured an interview and I regret not having captured, but I did contact Howard Smith Jr. and it was his father that presided over the trial that of Tucker when he was a youth, he was arrested for sitting in the wrong seat like in a streetcar and his father was a pretty unapologetic, a supporter of segregation when he was a congressman. So his son, maybe not surprisingly, didn't want to talk to me and he gave me a pretty curt response when I talked to him on the phone. So when I got off I was like, well, that's not happening, so yeah. But it would have been fascinating to get that interview. So to try hearing somebody defend that system, I suppose. Right, well, so my work now, like a lot of creative types, I have a day job so I work in development for a social justice nonprofit. So certainly the same passion that I had for this project and for the documentary and how it told the story of the civil rights struggle, certainly that fuels the work that I do for the social justice. It's a legal defense, public defender law firm. I think the way it should have probably affected me is I take away a message like the, what is the quote, the arc of the moral universe is long but always bends towards justice, right? But I made it in my 20s and I suppose I was a little bit more of an optimist then but now I'm in my 50s and since that time, we've had the war on terrorism, we've had the Trump administration, we've had George Floyd and gun violence that just never stops in the climate change and so on and so forth. So I don't know that, I feel that way about the direction that America is headed. So sorry to cast sort of a dark note on things with that but that being said, what do you do with that? When you have that sort of realization, well, you can put your tail between your legs and do nothing or you try to make whatever difference you can in the world. So I always saw this film, I always saw this story as part of a one piece of a larger puzzle and telling the story of the larger civil rights struggle. You know, Sam Tucker didn't litigate Brown versus Board of Education personally but this was kind of a critical test case that proved out that these arguments could be made. And so by the same token, does anyone think Dr. King single-handedly ushered like the voting rights actor? No, I mean, there's many players involved in the process and many steps along the way and similarly like the set in is one of those steps or it was one of those steps.