Introduction by filmmaker Clennon L. King
Joining King for a post-screening discussion and Q&A will be Dr. Louis W. Sullivan andAtty. Chevene B. King, Jr. Dr. Sullivan is an active health policy leader, minority health advocate, author, physician, and educator. He served as the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services during President George H. W. Bush’s Administration and was Founding Dean of the Morehouse School of Medicine. Atty. Chevene B. King, Jr. of Albany, Georgia, who practices law in Southwest Georgia, and represents clients in Early County, where James Fair, Jr.’s troubles unfolded.
Boston-based filmmaker Clennon L. King brings to the screen Fair Game: A 1960 Georgia Lynching Story.
Five years after Emmett Till, a Black New Jersey mother moved heaven and earth to rescue her son from a town notorious for lynchings
It’s the story of a black New Jersey Navy vet named James Fair, Jr., who, in May 1960, took a fateful pit stop in Georgia on his way to Florida, and, was arrested, jailed, tried, convicted, and sentenced to the electric chair in less than three days. The film details how the Navy vet’s mother, Alice Fair, stopped at nothing to save the life of her son.
“Few cases were as important to my father’s legal career,” said King, whose father, the late Atty. C.B. King, along with Atty. Donald L. Hollowell represented Fair and shielded him from three brushes with Georgia’s electric chair in less than 11 months.
The film’s narrative shuttles viewers between Fair’s hometown of Bayonne, New Jersey and Blakely, Georgia, located in infamous Early County, home to the second largest number of lynchings in the state’s history. It’s there that Fair’s troubles begin.
Joining King for the post-screening discussion and Q&A will be Martha’s Vineyard seasonal resident Dr. Louis W. Sullivan, who appears in the film, along with his brother, Walter W. Sullivan, Jr. The Sullivan brothers grew up in Blakely, and experienced first-hand the death grip of Jim Crow had on this predominantly black community.
The documentary also features Martha’s Vineyard season resident Vernon Jordan, who was a young law clerk with the filmmaker’s father and Atty. Donald L. Hollowell of Atlanta.
King has dedicated the film to the 24 black men who were lynched there between 1877 and 1950, and to his father, who help prevent Fair from becoming the 25th victim.
Fair Game: A 1960 Georgia Lynching Story marks the second documentary for Boston-based filmmaker Clennon L. King. His first documentary, which screened last August at the Strand Theatre, was the award-winning Passage at St. Augustine: The 1964 Black Lives Matter Movement That Transformed America.
King is a former Emmy®-nominated TV news journalist, who spent more than a decade reporting in the Sunbelt before entering documentary filmmaking.
King hails from a prominent civil rights family in Albany, Georgia, where his father, the late Attorney C.B. King, represented scores of civil rights demonstrators, including Dr. King (no relation), during the 1961-’62 Albany Movement.
His awards include an Emmy® nomination from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences’ Suncoast Chapter, a national Edward R. Murrow and a National Association of Black Journalists’ news award. King’s reporting on race has also been recognized by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.
King is the father of two adult sons, and resides in Roxbury, Massachusetts, home to AugustineMonica Films, producer of Passage at St. Augustine: The 1964 Black Lives Matter Movement That Transformed America.
Atty. Chevene B. King, Jr. of Albany, Georgia, who practices law in Southwest Georgia, and represents clients in Early County, where James Fair, Jr.’s troubles unfolded.
