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Alison Stewart: This is All Of It. I'm Alison Stewart live from the WNYC studios in Soho. Thank you for spending part of your day with us whether you're listening to us on the radio, live streaming right now, or listening on-demand, I'm really grateful you are here. On today's show, we'll speak with Martinus Evans, the founder of the Slow AF Run Club, to take your calls about your journey to becoming a runner and we'll run through some Juneteenth events in our area, and we'll talk about Orwellian Literary Festival in Narrowsburg, New York happening this weekend. Plus, we'll revisit our conversation about the documentary Turn Every Page: The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb. That is our plan. Let's get this started with the film After Sherman.

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The first documentary airing on the new season of PBS's POV is part doc part personal essay with a story about home history, and the South Carolina Lowcountry. Told through the eyes of Director Jon-Sesrie Goff. The film is called After Sherman and it's a poetic exploration of what the land means to the Gullah Geechee people of South Carolina and the threats they're facing from gentrification and displacement.

The land has been in the hands of the descendants of formerly enslaved people, a result of a historic order awarding emancipated Black people land issued six months before Juneteenth actually. The film is a personal history too. Sesrie Goff's father, Reverend Dr. Norvel Goff Sr. is from Georgetown, South Carolina. Sesrie Goff grew up in Connecticut and Rochester, New York following his father's work as a preacher and local NAACP leader. Yet all the while Goff's father was adamant that no matter where they were in the world, South Carolina was home.

The film takes a turn and we learned that Goff's parents were survivors of the 2015 Charleston mass shooting, in which a white supremacist murdered nine members of Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. Goff's father was the person who stepped in as the new interim pastor of the church and organized the funerals. After Sherman premieres on PBS on June 26th. Then will stream on Tubi starting on July 26th. Joining me now is Director Jon-Sesrie Goff. Hi, Jon.

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Hi. Thanks so much for having me, Alison.

Alison Stewart: Full disclosure, I recently moderated a post-screening Q&A with you for your film for a very appreciative audience. It's really nice to see you again. I gave this brief description of Sherman's field order from January 1865. Would you explain what the order did, and why you named the film After Sherman?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Yes. I actually like to start that history with the fact that a group of about 20 Black ministers met with William Sherman at his headquarters in Savannah, and they let out their wishes and demands for their community. That resulted in the field orders in which the lands from Charleston, South would be under the control of the formerly enslaved. In thinking about that experiment of not just what the orders did, but what the community did in coming together and building community and self-reliance even after the treaty was not honored, was a place that I wanted to start and group my work.

Alison Stewart: I know Alice Walker's work played in your pre-production. How so?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Yes. I was instructed by a mentor to go back and re-read Alice Walker's short story Everyday Use. The story is about two sisters and a quilt that's been in their family. One sister who moved away and picked up big city ideas of art galleries and things like that thought that this cultural treasure should be protected and looked at from a distance maybe something that you would put on a wall or a frame. Whereas the other sister who stayed home, wanted to use the quilt for warmth. She respected it as something of utility, despite the fact that it was this beautiful artwork and it had existed in the family for generations.

That tension is something that I feel with both Black culture at large, but in particular with Gullah Geechee identity and culture. It's something that I want to live in, but something also I want to celebrate and people to respect the beautiful artistry that exists within our community.

Alison Stewart: When you began this film, what was your goal with After Sherman? What major questions did you want to seek answers to?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: When I started, I was using the camera, honestly, as a shield. I was using it as something that I could hide behind to ask these questions about this land, that I knew that one day I would inherit. My grandmother who was 98 years old when she passed, I realized that not only was her cultural specificities such as her voice and her language leaving but the relevance to why this land is important to our family. Everything had been taken away from the property. Family members, neighbors, whoever, had taken everything down to the foundation of the house.

I remember going out there younger, and there used to be a chimney. Now, there's nothing. It was in my imagination, something that had infinite possibilities, yet, we didn't really discuss within our family. I use the guise of interviewing for a documentary to really probe my family about this land. Why do we have it? How do we protect it? How can we use it?

Alison Stewart: It's not a conventional documentary that there aren't talking heads and academics and written scripts. It's very cinematic and artistic, handheld camera shots, there's moments of silence. You're not afraid of silence in the film. Why was this the right way, the right course of filmmaking to tell the story?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Well, another thing of the origin, I had no intention for this film to be about me or my family. Not explicitly. I knew our stories intersected with the stories of other families. That's what I was trying to honor the common themes. I also wanted to show my love for this place, for the landscape, the people. South Carolina being such a complicated place, I often say I love and hate South Carolina. Smiling faces, beautiful places, I believe is one of the taglines for the state, but I'm also like in domestic terrorism. I really had to honor that. Because this was the place where I found respite from the violence of the world, I wanted people to be transformed to the Lowcountry and experience what it's like to be there. Oftentimes, that means sitting in silence with just the sounds of nature, the sounds of water, and allowing you to reflect.

Alison Stewart: There is though, a beautiful score. Tell us a little bit about who scored your film, and what your conversations were like.

Jon-Sesrie Goff: I'm just so lucky and fortunate that my good Gullah Geechee sister born in exile, like myself, Tamar-Kali lended her talents to this film as composer. Tamar scored narrative films, but more importantly, she's just completed a symphony that will premiere at Lincoln Center on July 5th called Sea Island Symphony: Red Rice, Cotton, and Indigo. That's important because there's several of us working within this cultural space that are trying to honor this legacy we've inherited. Right now we're starting to get a little bit of visibility, but it's important to know that these stories and traditions that we steward have been with us our entire lives and those who preceded us as well.

Alison Stewart: Let's listen to a little bit of the score. It's from the beginning of the film, and we'll hear a voiceover. This is from After Sherman.

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Voiceover: The people here came by water. They live by the water and eat from the water. We are water people.

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[end of video playback]

Alison Stewart: I should point out that the film also starts with just some gorgeous, gorgeous shots of the landscape. Just the sweeping shots. You worked as a cinematographer, am I right?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Yes.

[laughter]

Alison Stewart: Tell us about your dream for the visuals of the beginning of this film.

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Well, I'm going to paraphrase Ansel Adams who said something like, "When words are not enough, I'll focus on pictures and when pictures aren't enough, I'll be content with silence." For me, when pictures weren't enough, I wanted to be a photographer. I focused on the moving image. I focused on recording and documenting. That is what I bring through in terms of my visual gaze and skillset. Also, at a certain point, I couldn't do it all so I got to collaborate with a number of other brilliant cinematographers and video makers. It was just a real treat. Eric Branco, brilliant cinematographer. Jerry Henry, brilliant cinematographer, and Ashley Emile, another wonderful cinematographer who helped me along the way.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jon-Sesrie Goff. The name of the film is After Sherman. It will premiere on PBS on June 26th and will be streaming on Tubi starting July 26th. We get to meet your father in the film, Reverend Dr. Norvel Goff, Sr. There's a lot about your relationship to him. I'll give a little bit of biographical information, then we can talk more. He was a preacher, NAACP leader in Connecticut and Rochester, one of the leading voices during a lawsuit in which Kodak was found guilty of discrimination against Black employees. How did the making of this film illuminate your view of your father?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: When I was young, my dad used to joke that you'd take greatness for granted when you're always in contact with it. [laughs] He was like, "Why are you giving me such a hard time? I'm working so hard for you." Really I had to drop a lot of my youthful naivety when I started this film. It was a decades-long process, and at the beginning of it, I was interrogating my own feelings of having to share my dad with my community as a young person. I don't think we ever had a vacation, a real summer vacation because there was always a funeral or a wedding or a graduation, or someone being locked up or a trial, where he had to be present and supportive of our community members.

As a young person, I didn't fully understand that, and I questioned why. Even when I interviewed my mom, she commented that she never got to have a birthday because her birthday was September 7th during the middle of primary season. She was like, "We were always campaigning on my birthday." This idea that it was such a family effort. At some point, I thought that something was lost by having to participate in this act of community work or church work, and really I discovered so much was gained. I didn't have to worry about validation from classmates who maybe didn't share the same cultural identity or background as me because I had such a strong community that supported me and lifted me up my entire life. That's a direct result of the work that my parents did within that space.

Alison Stewart: The film comes back to this idea of birthplace versus homeplace. When you think about home, when you started the film, what would you consider home? Then how did that change over the course of making this film?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: That's complicated. My dad has always called me a global citizen, and my grandmother used to say, "I didn't let no grass grow up under my feet." What that means is when I closed my eyes, I was entranced by the stories like The People Could Fly. I closed my eyes and I knew home was someplace far away that maybe one day I would see it. I was always reckoning with the fact that my true homeplace was not the place I physically found myself. That requires one to have a number of devices such as faith and hope to endure being a stranger.

Alison Stewart: In the film, you interview some older folks in Lowcountry who live in remote areas, they want to share with you, and you want to ask them about Gullah Geechee culture. What insights did they give that helped you shape this film?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: One of the best insights I got came from Dr. Emory Campbell. You don't see him in the film, but you hear his voice. One of the foremost leaders and activists within the Gullah Geechee community. We were trying so hard to be respectful of the public imagination of Gullah Geechee culture. At some point, he told me and my friend Elijah Heyward, who was a consulting producer and participant in the film, that there is no single runway to be Gullah Geechee. He was like, "The way that you are is the truest representation of this culture." We don't have a costume per se, to where we don't have a leader. Each member of the community stands on equal footing and being the truest representation of that identity. Basically, that gave me the authority to move through the space in my total Gullah Geechee identity, and that was incredibly freeing.

Alison Stewart: My guest is Jon-Sesrie Goff. The name of the film is After Sherman. We'll have more with Jon after a quick break. This is All Of It.

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You're listening to All Of It on WNYC. I'm Alison Stewart. My guest this hour is Director Jon-Sesrie Goff. His new film After Sherman will premiere on PBS on June 26th. It's a part documentary, part personal essay, a story about home and history in the South Carolina Lowcountry. There's really a distressing part of the film where we see how the land that people have lived on for years goes up for auction, and how people are coming in, wealthy people, gentrifiers are coming in and they're bidding on this land that's been in families for a really long time. There's actually a moment when they ask to let the heirs bid first, or the heirs to-- It suggested, let the heirs have the land, and people don't honor that moment. What were you thinking in that moment when you saw that footage, and when did you decide that you were going to include it?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: I think when I first saw that footage, aside from dealing with parts of our property being sold off by the family members or encroached on by neighbors, what struck me to the core was how quickly one could lose something that was so important to them at an auction. With my historical lens, that put me in the imaginary space of what it must have been like for families to be separated by the auction block during the period of enslavement, and how easy it is for one to just come and take something so precious. That's what I felt.

For a long time, people were trying to get us to set up the church shooting as the spectacular event of the film, as the most dramatic heart-wrenching moment. I realized that there's so many heart-wrenching moments that happen quietly all the time such as the loss of land. When I realized that that was the ultimate act of violence that we documented, we knew that that's where we had to build the film up to. That became our dramatic inciting incident, and what we wanted the audience to walk away with more so than the shooting. The fact that this violence occurs in the shadows and it occurs often and it rips families apart.

Alison Stewart: You make a very clear choice to address the Charleston murders and the act of terrorism that killed nine people. The terrorist killed nine people. Let me make sure I say that clearly. Toward the end of the film, and you never mentioned his name, why did you wait till towards the end of the film to bring this into the conversation about Charleston and the Lowcountry, and why is his name never said?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: This is after Toni Morrison. This world very much like the community itself does not revolve around white people until an act of spectacular violence. I wanted to honor the reality of the space. As I were interviewing community members and church members, they instructed me on how to report this event because no one mentioned his name. I actually had to ask my mother and she said, "That's because we're not giving that person any power. He wanted to be notorious, he wanted his name to be remembered, but it will not be by us."

Alison Stewart: Your father was the person who had to conduct the nine funerals and served as interim pastor at the church after the tragedy. I'd like to play a clip from the film. In this scene, you sit down with your father in the yard and you ask him about the idea of forgiveness. This is from After Sherman.

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Reverend Dr. Norvel Goff Sr: When you forgive, it does not mean that I and others are void of anger, tears, and outright madness, but it has to be managed and that has to be harnessed, and that energy has to be used in a positive way. When I talk about forgiveness about the racist terrorists who entered Mother Emanuel Church at a Bible study where your mother and I just left 20 minutes earlier, the fact of the matter is I refuse to give that person or any other person that kind of control over my life, to have me held hostage by hatred. I decided to make a choice to help make things different because there are some good people in the world.

Jon-Sesrie Goff: They said that in 1968, and here we are 50 years later still dealing with the same type of--

Reverend Dr. Norvel Goff Sr: They not only said it in '68, they said it when they crucified Jesus, that there was some good in the world, which there was, you know. Joseph of Arimathea begged for his body, placed him in a borrowed tomb. There's always evil in the world, but the good news is that I believe that love and goodness outflanks hatred and fear.

[end of video playback]

Alison Stewart: What do you make of your dad's decision to forgive?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Oh, I had to grow into an understanding of that. A lot of it was generational. I have been an active part of many movements, going back to my younger years in high school where we were fighting against inequalities in our school system. In Hartford, Connecticut against police violence when 14-year-old Aquan Salmon was killed for holding a water gun in my community to occupy Wall Street to Black Lives Matter. I had to really ask him, "Are you thinking in an outdated mode of fault? Does this type of thinking no longer apply to Black people who are fed up with the injustices of this world?"

What I realized is that in order to do the work to fight those injustices, you have to free yourself from the bondage of hatred that he spoke about because that's what eats away at you. I know this just as I've grown in my own personal life, I think any of us who ever been mad at a friend for too long. You're spending years thinking about something or someone, or an incident, and this person has moved on and is living their life freely. I wanted to free up space in my heart and my mind to continue the work that my father and so many others have done. I have grown into a place of understanding that, but I don't think that's where I was in the immediate aftermath of the shooting.

Alison Stewart: There's an interesting scene when you gather a bunch of friends and folks in New York, right?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Right.

Alison Stewart: You have the conversation about, "Do we stay in New York? Do we go back home? Do we go back to where our people are from and reclaim it?" What did you get out of that session personally?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: That was eye-opening because off camera, not everyone in that session came from the South. Some of my friends who were from Philadelphia who were like, "I never thought about where I'm from, where my family is from." I was like, "My grandma's from Philly. I'm from Philly." It really opened up my understanding that the amount of repair that needs to take place within just the Black American and Caribbean diaspora within the new world itself is so deep and extensive, and it's touched on in other parts of the film.

I think once we realize that we are connected and we do share an identity that is greater than just the shared period of enslavement, I think that that will open up opportunities for more cooperation and the collective building within our communities whether they be in Harlem or St. Helena's.

Alison Stewart: What's a response to the film, something someone has said to you that lets you know you accomplished your goal?

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Thank you. I never thought that someone would thank me for just using my creative expression. More importantly, I think it was my composer, Tamar. Tamar said, "This is the first time that I've actually felt like I've seen our people."

Alison Stewart: The name of the film is After Sherman. You can watch it on PBS on POV on June 26th, and then it'll be streaming on Tubi starting on July 26th. Its Director is Jon-Sesrie Goff, the name of the film is After Sherman. Jon, thank you so much for being with us.

Jon-Sesrie Goff: Thank you, Alison.

 

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