5 Things: A Conversation With Spike Lee

Laughter and applause were the soundtrack that accompanied Spike Lee to campus this week, as the award-winning filmmaker was presented with the 25th Martin Luther King Jr. Social Justice Award.

Lee spoke in a wide-ranging and warm conversation with Heather A. Williams, a longtime friend and the Geraldine R. Segal Professor of American Social Thought and Professor of Africana Studies at Penn, to a full house in Zellerbach Theatre.

Lee, who wore a sweater of his and King’s alma mater, Morehouse College, said he grew up wanting to be second baseman for the New York Mets, but “genetics conspired against that” and he found his way into filmmaking.

The 25th MLK Jr. Social Justice Lecture & Award was hosted by the Center for Africana Studies (CFAS) and co-sponsored by the Office of the President, Annenberg School of Communication, and Annenberg Public Policy Center. President J. Larry Jameson, Annenberg Dean Sarah Banet-Weiser, and CFAS director Wale Adebanwi provided opening remarks. Lee also acknowledged longtime friend John Silvanus Wilson, who graduated with Lee from Morehouse and is now executive director of Penn’s McGraw Center for Educational Leadership, who was in the audience.

Here are five takeaways from the conversation between Lee and Williams:

‘Fearless‘ Leaders of the Civil Rights Movement Risked It All for Change

Lee recounted the scenario of the successful bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, in which Black citizens set up their own transportation networks to bypass the racially segregated bus system during the 13-month-long boycott.

“You may not know their names,” Lee said. “They put their lives on the line so we could do what we are doing now.”

The Power of Documentary

Known for dramas like “Malcolm X” and “Do the Right Thing,” Lee said one of his most powerful works was the documentary “4 Little Girls” about the killings of Denise McNair, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Addie Mae Collins in the 1963 bombing of a Baptist church in Birmingham, Alabama. The documentary was nominated for an Academy Award.

“I don’t really make a distinction between narrative films and documentary,” Lee said. “The storytelling, the storytelling—that’s the best work I ever done, for me, just my opinion.”

“Everybody in the country should see it right now,” Williams added.

Questioning Film Canonization

In Lee’s first year as a master’s student at NYU, he made a short film about “The Birth of a Nation,” the notorious 1915 film about the Ku Klux Klan. In Lee’s film, “The Answer,” a young Black filmmaker is hired to produce a remake of the original movie, which is widely regarded as racist.

In film school, faculty “talked about the brilliance of the 1915 film’s director D.W. Griffith, but never talked about how the Klan was dormant and this film brought the Klan back to life, and consequently Black people were lynched,” said Lee. “I did this as a response to that film.”

To Win in Life, You Have To Have a Team

No one succeeds by themselves, Lee said. “I didn’t do this alone. I had a gang, I had my people, my folks,” he said, referencing cinematographer and frequent partner Ernest Dickinson. The two started working together as students at the Tisch School of the Arts, where Lee now teaches, and Dickinson became a fellow director. “You just got to have a do-or-die mentality and got to have a belief in yourself,” Lee said.

A Friendship Honoring a Matriarch and Celebrating Black Culture

Williams recalled having been taught by Jacquelyn Lee, Spike Lee’s mother, while a high school student at St. Ann’s School in Brooklyn. She took students to Broadway shows, film showings, and poetry readings, Williams said. “I read almost all the books in the Black section of the library at St. Ann’s, but she opened up this other world of Black culture.” Williams reflected on meeting Spike Lee at his mother’s funeral, in 1976, an event that sparked many years of friendship.