The “small town girl with big time dreams,” alumna Tameka “Hollywood” Robinson has crept back on her old stomping grounds at PVAMU to conduct the world premiere of her first film, On The Inside Looking Out, which will be shown Thursday, Nov. 10, at 6 p.m., in the New Science building, room A101.Robinson graduated from Jasper High School in Jasper, Texas in 1995. Upon graduation, Texas Southern University was where she attended to major in radio and TV.
In the spring of 1996 Robinson was invited to take part in “Springfest” activities with friends she had at PV. She attributes the beginnings of her filmmaking career to that experience: “When I stepped on the campus at PV everyone was friendly and welcoming. I knew that day that I was going to transfer from TSU to PV.” Being from Jasper, PV made Robinson feel as if she were at home, and in the fall of 1996 she was enrolled as a radio/ TV major with a minor in history.
During Robinson’s undergraduate studies at PV she thought it was important to get involved with as many organizations as she could, therefore she joined The Panther as a writer and PALS. In 1998 Robinson also became a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc., and gives “20 Questions” credit for the line name her organization gave her: “I drove a blue Mustang and was known for driving fast. 20 Questions said, ‘Who’s the AKA who thinks she is speed-racer?’ and ever since then that’s what everyone called me.”
Being a member of the AKA sorority, Robinson saw the need to put in place her own position within the organization as a video engineer. Her role consisted of filming the organization’s activities and community service projects to show at various functions. These short films gave Robinson the motivation to become a filmmaker and also laid the foundation for the project that was about to change her life forever.
In the summer of 1998, Robinson was informed of a racially motivated murder that took place in her town: “I blew off what people were telling me about what was going on in Jasper until I looked at the news and saw a lady who lived down the street from me, and James Byrd Jr., the last person I saw before I came to summer school.”
Robinson explains that Byrd was known as the man who walked the streets and never really spoke to anyone; he kept to himself. Byrd’s face was usually covered by his large brimmed hat, and was known around town as “Toe” because his toe had been cut off in an accident. As he walked down the eastern end of the town from a party on June, 7, 1998, he accepted a ride with three white men (chron.com). CNN.com reports that instead of taking Byrd home they took him to a wooded area, beat him, sprayed his face with black paint, chained him to the tail end of a pickup truck, and dragged him to his death on a road east of Jasper.
Robinson’s advisor at the time knew the Byrd incident could not be ignored and told her to take a school camera from the radio, TV, and film department at PV and go to Jasper and film everything she could. The advisor encouraged Robinson to take on this project because she knew that Robinson would be able to capture another side of the story that other affiliates wouldn’t be able to. Robinson took the advice and began her journey into something she knew nothing about.
Still enrolled at PV, Robinson stepped foot on territory that she thought she would never see in real life, but only in books that her mother made her read as a child: “It’s like the stories in the books I read were coming into fruition. I sat on my front porch and watched the Ku Klux Klan walk up and down my street. I had the Black Panther Party, Al Sharpton, and Jesse Jackson sitting at my breakfast table. It was unreal.”
Robinson filmed and interviewed as many people as she could, and upon graduation from PV in December 1999, she kept the footage but decided to work for the Houston Independent School District. After two years of teaching, she continued to have an itch for filmmaking, and says, “I was destined to make films.” She decided to attend Howard University’s filmmaking school to live out her dreams.
Robinson knew that she had to do something with all the footage she captured in Jasper, therefore, she made the assignment the topic for her thesis as a requirement to graduate from film school this fall in December.
Although Byrd’s death has been the topic of an HBO special series program, Robinson knew that she would be able to tell another side of the story: “My grandfather, R.C. Horn, was elected as the first black mayor of Jasper in 1997. What would make my story different is that I could film from the inside looking out, and I am able to relive moments when the media, the KKK, and the Black Panther infiltrated my town.”
On The Inside Looking Out has been constructed with 14 interviews by Robinson asking what are the feelings these people have about Jasper now, and also to give a voice to Jasper and dispel the myths that media have placed on this small Texas town: “The voice of this film will speak to everyone and show that every town has a meaning. Racism is everywhere and this could have happened to anybody. If it wasn’t James Byrd, it could have been me. If it wasn’t Jasper, it could have been PV.”
Robinson feels that it is important to use this film as a vehicle to open the minds of black people and show that tragedy happens, but “we” must move forward: “The world needs to know that Byrd’s murderers came out the woodwork and I have never known the KKK to be in Jasper before.” She says that this film is to show how blacks need to learn how to forgive whites for what was done in slavery: “Although these things happened, in our town blacks and whites stuck together. As long as we continue to blame the white man for our downfall and what happened in slavery we won’t get anywhere. If James Byrd’s sister can forgive the men who did this to her brother why can’t we forgive and take the opportunities we have and run with it?”
“Ignorance is bliss,” says Robinson as she elaborates on the importance of black unity: “The white man can’t save us. We have to save ourselves. Like Dubois said, ‘We’ve got to take the veil off and reveal our true selves.’ Like Farakhan said, ‘We need to rise up as a people.'” In saying this, Robinson wants this film to open the minds of the people who see it because she is sure that every person may or may not like it, but they will walk away with a new found knowledge: “Education is your strongest weapon. That’s all ‘we’ got.”
-“Hollywood” is to have faith in God and to speak dreams into existence.
-Robinson