My parents were the biggest influence in my life. From my early childhood, they taught me a whole range of skills, from carpentry to painting. I remember one time, when my father was planning an addition to our house, he insisted that my two brothers and I draw up our own plans. He would take my efforts very seriously, asking, ”Why did you do that?” (and) ”Why did you put the steps there?” That helped build self-confidence.
My father (Willie Lawson) was an inventor, extremely imaginative and constantly creating things. He was a self-educated person. He was only 16 when he took a job in the coal mines in Birmingham (Ala.). Eventually he started his own business, Lawson`s Repair Shop.
When I was a young girl, my father always insisted I learn how to work on cars. His notion was that if I could do a transmission job, I could make my living anywhere in the world.
My mother (Velma Lawson) had been a schoolteacher before she married at age 36. Once my mother was married she stopped working because it was important to my father that she didn`t work-it was a sign of moving into the middle class. It was also sort of a frustration for her.
We would go on long family trips each summer: Canada, the West Coast, Mexico-anywhere you could go by car. We would camp out as we would travel. I always thought this was great fun. Later, when I was older, I realized we camped because this was during a time of intense segregation in the South. Blacks weren`t allowed in motels in areas of Mississippi or Arkansas or other segregated places.
In my early childhood, segregation was something we accepted as just
”the way it was.”
I didn`t become jaded because I lived in a very vibrant black community, where neighbors were very supportive of each other.
I was an honors student in high school, but my family did not have money for college. When my mother died suddenly of a heart attack (in 1959) when I was 13, I started to feel I had to be more independent and self-reliant.
I decided to try for a scholarship and work my way through school. I entered a state science contest, which was segregated. I won first prize and enrolled as a pre-med student at Tuskegee Institute.
But the civil rights movement interfered with my career plans. I had been interested in the fight against segregation since my high school days, when Martin Luther King marched through Birmingham.
So when I went to college, it was with the thinking that while my education was extremely important, it was even more important to participate in (civil rights) demonstrations.
At one point I ended up being arrested at a demonstration in Montgomery, Ala. I spent a week in jail, even though I was still enrolled in school. I knew it was coming to a point where I was going to have to make a choice between (my degree) and the civil rights movement. It was a very difficult decision because I knew that in relinquishing my scholarship I was now embarking on a very uncertain future.
I decided I would walk away from it all. Compared to the difficult decision, the next steps were easy. I became a staff member of SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee that Martin Luther King helped launch in 1960.) I was living on probably $15 a week. I would sleep on the floor in homes near wherever we were doing voter registration.
Almost immediately, I felt that I had taken the morally correct stand. This was around 1964 and 1965, when three civil rights workers were killed. A tremendous amount of support started coming to the civil rights movement from around the country.
By the late `60s I left SNCC because the fine line (between disobedience and going too far) kept getting pushed further and further. There were urban groups who wanted to identify with the Southern civil rights movement-the Black Panther party and groups like that, which I couldn`t subscribe to or identify with.
At that point I became more interested in economic and educational parity. From 1968 to 1969, I worked with the National Council of Negro Women on an economic self-empowerment project for rural women. I then took a job as deputy director of an adult education program in Mississippi`s Whitman County. Some of the people I had worked with in Atlanta had moved to Washington, D.C., and had started a bookstore and publishing company called Drum and Spear, which specialized in Africa and African-American history. They invited me to become the art director and I accepted.
Shortly after, I was offered a position as coordinator of a joint publishing venture with the Tanzanian government. I decided a change of scenery would be good. On two weeks` notice I moved to Tanzania. I was going to an unknown place, but with (the security of) a job.
I stayed from 1970 to 1972. I started working with a number of African writers and journalists. We started talking about how ironic it was that we were working in print in a society that for the most part did not read. I began to feel that film and TV would be the educational media of the future.
At this point I moved toward film. I didn`t want to dabble, I wanted to seriously study film. I decided I would return to the U.S. and go to graduate school.
I went to New York and applied to Columbia University. I got a pretty rapid acceptance with the offer of a partial scholarship. They accepted my life experience as credit toward the completion of an undergraduate degree. It was one of the most fortunate things for me.
I made terrible student films and I wrote terrible screenplays and I enjoyed it immensely. I thought it was absolutely right for me.
To support myself while I was in school, I got a (part-time) job as a writer, and later, publicity director, for a fundraising campaign for the United Church of Christ. That allowed me an opportunity to work on a film for a fundraising campaign. (After graduation) I immediately got a job as an assistant editor for a small film company, William Green Productions. I was eventually promoted to editor.
It was mostly assistant work and I didn`t do (much) that was truly mine.
I taught film for three years at Brooklyn College and was eventually offered a job as executive director of the Film Fund, a new foundation that would benefit independent filmmakers. I was the primary fundraiser.
In 1980, I got a call from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in Washington and was offered a job as coordinator of their television program fund. I was essentially a liaison with the independent producers. During my nine years with CPB I was promoted to associate director for drama and arts programs and eventually began to work with series like ”American Playhouse” and acquired some budgetary responsibilities. In my last six months at CPB, I was responsible for a $42 million budget.
While it is by no means an ideal world, there is a tradition at public television of women holding some high positions. My predecessor was a woman, although my position is somewhat different because I have more decision-making control with our budget and for joint plans between CPB and PBS.
I`ve been in the new job since December. It`s been a very busy, intense period. I want to have a number of things happen as quickly as possible. I`m planning several conferences to explore how prime-time TV is changing.
I want to have more people watching public TV because I want them to see how wonderful it is. I want to broaden the scope of public television.
In a way, I`m still continuing my mission of helping people, but using a different and powerful medium: television.
I know my father would be proud of me (he died of Alzheimer`s in 1978)
because he was extremely supportive of me throughout my life.
When I was living in Tanzania in 1970, he wrote me a letter, which I treasure. He said it didn`t matter what I did; he knew I would choose to do something right for me. He said, ”Whatever you do, make sure you have victory.” I felt this was his blessing and a sense of direction as well.
