As a writer, director, and professor of film at the University of Kansas, filmmaker Kevin Willmott has had a long and fruitful career. Willmott’s storytelling focus often centers on the Black experience in the United States and often from a historical and social perspective. “C.S.A The Confederate States of America” is a mockumentary about an alternate U.S. history, wherein the Confederacy won the American Civil War. “Jayhawkers” is a sports drama that follows the life of Wilt Chamberlain, and the 1956 Kansas Jayhawks basketball team, and “Destination Planet Negro” is a comedic sci-fi fantasy about African-American leaders in 1939 who respond to Jim Crow segregation by building a rocket to colonize Mars.
‘The 24th’: Kevin Willmott’s Film About The Horrorifc 1917 Houston Riot [Review]
Additional films like “Bunker Hill,” and “The Only Good Indian” only support the narrative of social issues, the marginalized, and the many issues of racism, bigotry, and oppression they face. In recent years, it’s Willmott’s creative collaborations with Spike Lee that helped make him a household name. He’s co-written Lee’s last three movies, “Chi-Raq,” “BlacKkKlansman,” and “Da 5 Bloods,” and helped bring a lot of humor to difficult topics about being Black in America. “BlacKkKlansman” garnished him an Academy Award while “Da 5 Bloods” is also receiving critical acclaim and looking like an early Oscar contender for this year.
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But Willmott loves to uncover hidden and unknown moments of history and “The 24th” takes him back to the director’s chair to do that very thing. Much like the way HBO’s “Watchmen” illuminated the largely unknown story of Tulsa’s 1921 riot and race massacre, this historical drama tells the story of the all-Black Twenty-Fourth United States Infantry Regiment, the real-life Houston Riot of 1917 and the dehumanization they faced when acting as military police in the Jim Crow south. This tension soon spills into a mutiny and riot, which is bloody, brutal, and full of unjust repercussions. Starring Trai Byers, Bashir Salahuddin, Aja Naomi King, Mo McRae, Tosin Morohunfola, Mykelti Williamson, and Thomas Haden Church, “The 24th” is a sobering drama and tries to find the humanity in this ugly and largely unknown historical tragedy.
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We spoke to Willmott about “The 24th” and why it was important to dramatize this difficult, but timely moment in history.
What made you want to tell this story?
I’ve always been interested in hidden history, the whole story. I saw a photograph many years ago, probably 30 years ago of the Houston Riot trial, it just blew my mind. The fact that, there is this photograph of 63 Black men, you know, surrounded by white cars, and the caption, “the largest murder trial of American history.” I’d never heard anything about it, and wanted to know, what is going on here? It’s a deeply hidden part of our American history. Unfortunately, most movies have been examples of how we buried this history, and then we’re going to repeat it. That’s the thing that really caught my attention from years ago.
How hard was it getting the information, documents from the court case? Was the military willing to assist you with any of your research?
Well, there is only one real book on it. So, I just took the basic facts of the story from everything that I could, research and find, then create a fictional story around that date based on what actually happened. In the film, we changed the names. The five main characters’ depictions for the most part are pretty accurate of how the incident happened. And obviously the results of it— it’s a pretty classic example of how these incidents have happened all through American history. Literally every race rise in America has involved police abuse, and that’s really important for people to understand. The police may not have been at the center of the abuse, but oftentimes they were the flashpoint of the riot aka uprisings in the south, or they contributed greatly to the incident, and that was the case in Houston.
It seems very timely for this film to be released, especially with everything that’s going on in this country. Are you hoping with ‘The 24th‘ that people understand that Black Men have always fought for this country and showed patriotism even before they had their civil rights?
No doubt about it. Talking about it you’re getting there. It’s really important to define what patriotism is—patriotism is supposed to be a love of country. And unfortunately, Black soldiers specifically, what they endured in Houston is typical of the treatment they received up until the Korean war. You have had numerous incidents of Black soldiers in World War II coming back from serving in Germany or in Japan, and, going back home to the South and being attacked because they were Black men in uniform. There are several instances of people that were murdered and one very famous one about a young soldier that was blinded because he was a Black man in uniform. So the whole notion of what is patriotic, that becomes—as we showed in the film that these men wanted to want to fight in France desperately because they knew that if they can prove their manhood, their love of country, hopefully, things will improve back home.
I liked the fact that you showed that Black people weren’t monolithic. There have been a lot of misconceptions about African-Americans during that time that explain why it was important for you to show that there were educated African-Americans and those that were denied education? How that caused conflict within the race?
No doubt. This period is an interesting period of African-American history because Booker T. Washington basically was saying to learn a trade and get a skill and prove yourself. W.B. Dubois, who was educated overseas, and goes to Berlin and, and gets some education is suggesting to the educated 10% they should raise up the 90% still in poverty and struggling. Trai Byers’s Boston’s character is a reflection of that. You know, he is, one of those guys that has gotten a break and a great education.
Knowing the racial makeup of the South? Why did the military continuously send African-American troops to the South to train?
Right? It lets you know how they just did not really care. They did not acknowledge the problems that obviously would probably occur, but I think more than anything, they didn’t see it because they took Black soldiers for granted and they also kind of believed they’d just take it. Take the abuse. You could even say that they wanted them to learn to be subservient. It’s hard to say, but I think one thing you could say for sure is that there was little care or consideration about those choices.
Minor spoilers follow.
Talk a little about Mykelti Williamson character arc as Sergeant Hayes? He was a career soldier, war veteran and wasn’t fond of Boston. He didn’t like that the Colonel Norton company commander (Thomas Haden Church) treated him better.
The situation that Sergeant Hayes is very typical for Black soldiers of any kind of position in leadership. They obviously loved their men. They wanted to protect them, and they really cared greatly for the men in their commands. But oftentimes, there would be a level of oppression or even almost abuse that went along with their treatment. They must find a way to function within this system of oppression. White officers are not treating them as if they’re intelligent or have insight into anything.
When Boston shows up and he starts to express all these notions about raising up the men and finding some sense of equality, being a Sergeant like Hayes, he thinks, “what are you kidding? This is going to get us all in trouble.” That’s that dynamic that we know—notions like equality, justice, and fairness where the things that Sergeant Hayes knew did not exist. And, and so when we reached that moment in the movie where they all must make a choice you know, that Sergeant Hayes has been with, with the notions of equality, justice, and freedom the entire time.
Understandable. Can we also talk a little bit about Thomas Haden Church’s Colonel Norton character? He saw something in Boston that made him say, you know, I’m going to help this young man. Do you think he understood where Boston was coming from, especially him not wanting to go to Officer’s training camp initially? Or did he just look at him as somebody that had more tools in the toolbox, compared to his compatriots?
It’s probably a little bit of both. There were probably men like Colonel Newman (Thomas Haden Church) who cared about the men. Unfortunately, they lived in a system that would only allow him to act and care so much. I don’t think he understands enough to be an ally. We try to show that even an ally can only help you so much in this system. And when they hit that wall, it becomes a self-kind of motivating choice. Typically people look out for themselves and it’s not necessarily a betrayal so much as this is the machine. I think this is a very typical situation where allies try to help, the system kind of comes in and says, “you can’t do that.” We’re not going to give these men any justice. And at some point, the ally kind of fades away.
Do you think that at any point, the military will review this story and clear the men’s records?
I certainly hope so because they were men that were pushed beyond any human capacity to suffer. It’s time for us to go back and honestly look at the realities of those injustices. How they reached a breaking point, and there are so many problems within the trial. Who knows who was guilty and who was innocent? But more than anything it’s time to correct the loss of what was done to those men.
“The 24th” is available now for purchase as well as a rental on all digital platforms.