CAST
VOICING THE PERSONAL WRITINGS OF REV. JAMES LAWSON
Jesse Williams, actor, activist, producer, and former high school teacher whose work bridges storytelling and social justice. He played Rev. James Lawson in Lee Daniels’ film, The Butler, and sought his counsel as he prepared the role. Williams earned a Tony Award nomination for his Broadway debut in Take Me Out and was most recently seen in The Great Lillian Hall alongside Jessica Lange and Kathy Bates. His recent credits include Only Murders in the Building, Netflix’s Your Place or Mine, and Paramount+’s Secret Headquarters. Williams is widely known for his role as Dr. Jackson Avery on Grey’s Anatomy. As a producer, Williams co-executive produced the Academy Award–winning short Two Distant Strangers and Norman Lear’s docuseries America Divided. He is a co-founder of VISIBILITY, an art and media studio centered on social impact, and a partner and board member of Scholly, which has connected students to over $100 million in scholarships. A longtime civil rights advocate, Williams serves on the boards of Advancement Project and Sankofa.org.
FEATURED INTERVIEWS:
Lawson Family Members
Angeline Butler, Activist
CA Senator Maria Elena Durazo
TN Representative Justin Jones
Dr. Bernard Lafayette, Co-founder of SNCC
GA Rep. John Lewis
Diane Nash, Co-founder of SNCC
Dr. Terrence Roberts, Little Rock Nine
Bryan Stevenson, Founder and Director, Equal Justice Initiative
Ambassador Andrew Young
PRODUCTION
Producer/Director Karen Hayes holds an M.F.A. in Film and Television Production from UCLA. She was selected for Black Public Media, the Tribeca All Access and American Film Institute’s (AFI) Directing Workshop for Women (DWW) fellowships.
She wrote, produced, and directed the short film An Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl. Based on the autobiography of Harriet Jacobs it is the story of a Black woman forced to choose between freedom of body and spirit. It screened at the Pan-African Film and other festivals nationally.
Hayes' production company, Ubuntu Motion Pictures, is devoted to telling stories that educate, create dialog about, and promote justice and healing. She has produced many documentary shorts for educational and non-profit organizations, including PSAs on HIV/AIDS Education featuring Nobel Peace Laureate Desmond Tutu. Hayes was also granted unique access to follow and film Desmond Tutu internationally over a 15-year period and is completing the resulting documentary feature, The Foolishness of God: A Forgiveness Journey with Desmond Tutu.
Pamela Tom is an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and director whose films have premiered at Sundance and Telluride and aired nationally on PBS. Her acclaimed documentary Tyrus, about Chinese American artist and Disney legend Tyrus Wong aired on American Masters. Finding Home: A Foster Youth Story won a Los Angeles Emmy and LA Press Club Award. A longtime advocate for equity in filmmaking, she served as Director of Diversity at Film Independent, leading Project: Involve, a key pipeline for BIPOC filmmakers. Tom holds an MFA from UCLA and a BA with Honors from Brown University.
Jerry Henry, Director of Photography, specializes in nonfiction storytelling centered on history, culture, and social Justice. Henry's credits include the Oscar-nominated Exit Through the Gift Shop, the Peabody Award-winning American Revolutionary, and HBO's Grammy Award-winning docuseries The Defiant Ones. His recent work includes HBO's adaptation of Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me, Netflix's High on the Hog, and The 1619 Project.
Editor, Steven Golliday is an Emmy Award winning editor of films such as King in the Wilderness, Civil War (or Who Do We Think We Are), Voice of Freedom and The First Step. His films have screened at festivals around the world as well as on PBS and HBO. He says, “Cutting vérité films like Far From the Tree and Civil War (or Who Do We Think We Are) honed my empathic approach to editing, as well as my abilities to provide structure to captured moments of everyday life. Within the documentary community and industry, I am committed to revolutionizing the structures that have long failed to incorporate marginalized peoples in an equitable and meaningful way."
Co-Editor, Jesseca Ynez Simmons is an accomplished filmmaker who employs a sensorial approach exploring ways for form to be an extension of content. Recurring themes in her work include music, social justice, the environment, gender, and female perspectives. Her achievements include the Director’s Award for Artistic Merit from the Santa Cruz Film Festival for her documentary, I CAN ONLY BE MARY LANE, and recognition from the American Society of Cinematographers for her work on EMERALD ICE, a short 'docufantasy' exploring the life of American Poet Diane Wakoski. She is the Founder of the Dayton Independent Film Festival and served as its Director from 2019 to 2022. She is currently finishing her feature debut MEDUSA, which explores this liminal figure in a modern context.
Dawn Porter is an award-winning documentary filmmaker whose work has appeared on ESPN, Netflix, HBO, PBS, and Discovery. Her latest film, Luther: Never Too Much, premiered at the 2024 Sundance Film Festival, where it earned accolades from critics and audiences alike. In 2023, Dawn directed The Lady Bird Diaries, which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival. The groundbreaking, all-archival documentary about Lady Bird Johnson reveals a complex portrait of one of the most influential and least understood First Ladies. Later in the year, her docuseries Deadlocked: How America Shaped the Supreme Court premiered on Showtime and Paramount+ and would later be named among the 17th Television Academy Honors.
Additional Production credits:
Executive Producers:
Susan Adelman
Sandra J. Evers-Manly
Claudio Llanos
Dr. Lois Sprague
Vanderbilt University
Rev. Lawson’s Personal Writings Voiced by:
Jesse Williams