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James Reynolds, age 87, has led a full, rich and admirable life — and he’s still got more he’d like to accomplish. As he puts it, “I want to give future generations some insight into the way things were.”
Rebels Remembered: Law, Not Justice, a documentary by Dick Alweis that premieres at the Denver Central Library this week, more than achieves this goal. The offering provides an overview of policing in Denver from an African-American perspective, touching upon the open racism that was endemic in the first half of the twentieth century, the civil-rights battles of the 1960s and the reforms that laid the groundwork for the improved but still often testy relationship between cops and today’s residents of color. Better yet, it tells these stories via striking photographs, fascinating archival footage and the reminiscences of individuals like Reynolds, the first Denver chairman of the influential Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and a member of the Colorado Civil Rights Commission from 1963 to 1980.
“Discrimination has been just terrible to me,” Reynolds says. “And all of my life, I wanted to do something about it.”
The roots of Law, Not Justice, the second in a planned five-part series, stretch back to 1997-1998, when Reynolds and other CORE veterans invited Alweis to participate in a project intended to teach young people about past struggles. The group wanted Alweis to start by chatting with James Farmer, a CORE co-founder then living in Virginia, and while the filmmaker initially thought the trip wasn’t terribly necessary, he calls the interview “one of the most incredible days of my life. He was totally blind, had both legs amputated and was dying of diabetes, but he was an unbelievably inspirational presence.”
Farmer, who passed away in 1999 only a few months after meeting with Alweis, is certainly a highlight of the documentary, but he’s far from the only one. Speakers range from Lauren Watson, leader of the Black Panthers in Denver, to former police chief Art Dill and both Wellington and Wilma Webb.
Along the way, many particularly shameful chapters in Denver’s annals are shared. For instance, witnesses explain how the Ku Klux Klan essentially controlled the police force of the 1920s — no surprise, considering that Benjamin F. Stapleton, namesake of the city’s former airport, was an avowed member of the Klan when he was elected mayor in 1923. But tales of terror linked to outfits such as the Colorado Rangers, a ’20s-era corps that was disbanded after a year for being too violent, are offset by examples of bravery and heroism. Take the story of a light-skinned black doctor who attended Klan meetings at considerable personal risk in order to warn his people when and where the next attack was scheduled.
The first segment of Rebels Remembered debuted in 1999. Alweis hopes the third and fourth volumes, about education and employment, will be completed by the end of 2003, with the final section, which will focus on employment, to follow shortly thereafter. He feels an urgency to move forward as quickly as possible, in part because vintage film footage and photographs are deteriorating.
“These resources are being lost,” Alweis says. “Everyone says they should be kept, but then they don’t allocate enough of a budget to preserve them. They’re falling apart, curling, degrading, and they’ll be inaccessible before long.”
The years are piling up on Reynolds, too, but he’s determined that Denver’s civil-rights rebels be remembered. “I think it’s important and significant for people to know that there have been many changes,” he says, “and that there are still some that need to be made.”
