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The threat came just days before the premiere of “Black in Mayberry.”
An anonymous email warned the tiny El Segundo Museum of Art that it would be “firebombed” if the museum continued to support Black Lives Matter.
The nonprofit art lab had co-sponsored the film “Black in Mayberry” and allowed the filmmakers to use its shuttered space during the pandemic to shoot the documentary, which recounts the experiences of Black people in one of Los Angeles County’s whitest cities: El Segundo.
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These are the voices of El Segundo.
The city’s residents are sharing their experiences with racism in “Black in Mayberry,” a new film inspired by Black Lives Matter protests in El Segundo. The film aims to tell the stories that may not always be discussed between people of different races.
One young woman talks about how she always dresses in bright athletic gear when she’s jogging to make it clear that she is exercising and not running from something.
Another talks about the pressure of being the “token Black friend” and sometimes feeling like she’s being used as an accessory so some of her friends can say they’re not racist.
At that moment, Taylor says she felt a powerful urge to document the stories and to preserve them for calmer moments when audiences could better hear and absorb them. She wanted to capture the fleetingness of a moment of protest and preserve the grievances of residents of the town. And so she produced the documentary Black in Mayberry, which won the Best Documentary award from the Marina del Rey Film Festival.
After the documentary premiered in May of 2021, the town began to talk about race in a different way. Taylor was particularly surprised at the reaction from White residents, who she says approached the screening of the movie with an open mind and afterward opened conversations with other people in the town.
It was once a sundown town, where signs made people of color know they were not welcome after dark. Even those who worked within city limits were not permitted to be there once the sun went down.
A new documentary called “Black in Mayberry” confronts the racist past and present of the city, through the personal stories of more than a dozen Black residents.
The film is produced by Tanya Taylor, who moved to El Segundo in 2020. Taylor grew up in the U.K., and says she’s all too familiar with being one of the very few Black people in her community. She was struck, however, by the number of people she’s encountered in El Segundo who want the community to stay white.
The hour-long film tells 12 stories of Blackness in an overwhelmingly homogenous city (according to a 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimate, nearly 72% of El Segundo residents are white; less than 4% of residents are Black).
“I wasn’t surprised that we had some kind of threat…and I wasn’t intimidated, because I feel a lot of the times people do this is because they want to stop your actions,” said Tanya Taylor, the film’s producer.
Taylor is a founding member of El Segundo for Black Lives. The group formed in 2020 in response to the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer last May, and Taylor helped organize events, protests and marches. She’s seen quite a few threats.
We thought we would create a series of short conversations where we had our Black residents, students and professionals here in El Segundo just speak on one topic, one element that they probably wouldn’t usually divulge to their White neighbors,” said Tanya Taylor, the film’s producer and one of the co-founders of the organization El Segundo for Black Lives, which has teamed up with the El Segundo-based art laboratory ESMoA for a live screening of the film on Tuesday, May 11, at Brewport Tap House.
The message is for everyone who’s open to listening. The people who are speaking are people who live here. They are students; they are mothers; they are professionals here. The message is really for everyone because at the end of the day it’s a human issue,” Taylor said.
When we asked why she decided to proceed with the Black in Mayberry project, Taylor said “Knowledge is really important. It is nice to stand in the street and hold signs, but you must educate the supporters. There is really no changing people’s minds in the middle of a demonstration. She noted how, now, many had already made up their minds about an issue, “digging their heels in” she said. She said she was looking for a way, a non confrontational way to reach people in her new community.
The message is for everyone who’s open to listening. The people who are speaking are people who live here. They are students; they are mothers; they are professionals here. The message is really for everyone because at the end of the day it’s a human issue,” Taylor said.
Tanya Taylor and Mark Knight’s feature length-film Black in Mayberry will have its live premiere in downtown El Segundo on Tuesday, May 11, 2021. The film opens in black and white on a shot of the Chevron refinery and the sounds of a crowd chanting, “Black Lives Matter” is heard as the title appears and fades to a plain room where speakers include Black residents, students, and visitors talking about their lived experience in El Segundo.
Originally imagined as a series of shorts, the film evolved over time as protests for racial justice took place around the world during a global pandemic that accumulated racial disadvantages in almost every aspect of society.
We’ve asked the filmmakers to share a little bit about the making of the film and their collaboration with the cast. After the reading, we invite you to stream Black in Mayberry from home starting Wednesday May 12, 2021 until Saturday May 15, 2021.
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