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Wide Angle 21.2 (1999) 11-18


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O Lucky Man!
George Stoney's Lasting Legacy

Deirdre Boyle

[Figure]   [Figure]   [Figure 1]   [Figure 2]

Who is that man in the plaid shirt? George Stoney has been a signal presence on the independent media landscape for more than half a century. Probably best known as the "father of public access" cable television, Stoney has worn a number of hats over the many years he has labored as a documentary filmmaker, community activist, video pioneer, university teacher, film department chairperson, and ombudsman for community media worldwide. His filmography is pages long--numbering such classic documentaries as the profile of an African- American midwife, All My Babies, the portrait of pastor John Garcia Gensel and his jazz congregation in Shepherd of the Night Flock, the portrait, The Weavers: Wasn't That a Time!, and his most recent study of the Southern textile workers' strike in The Uprising of '34.

Stoney always has been around wherever interesting things were happening. He went to Canada in 1968 when video became part of the seminal Challenge for Change program. Then he came to New York and co-founded the Alternate Media Center, which helped spawn the public access cable movement in the United States. He calls it luck, but others would differ. Over the years he has worked with some of the giants of the documentary field and passed on this daunting legacy to his own legions of students.

Everyone knows George, but few really know the man behind the genial yet formidable image of the consummate media activist. What were the ingredients [End Page 11] that fueled his lifelong passion for racial justice, social responsibility, community, and freedom of speech? What makes him so vital and inspiring a leader?

George Stoney never dreamed of becoming a filmmaker when he was growing up as one of five children in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during the twenties. He was raised to read the Bible in the morning and Shakespeare or Milton at night by his father, a minister who "forsook the church because it didn't live up to his expectations. Nothing ever did." 1 His mother died when he was six years old, leaving the family bereft of close relations. Although he wasn't part of the church, Stoney was deeply influenced by the local Moravian community, by their ethical values and attitudes toward music and the central beauties of life. Perhaps his appreciation for community and his sense of being an outsider were born here. Though poor, his father came from the middle class, and he gave his son a sense of Christian obligation crossed with a kind of noblesse oblige.

George, the only boy, was his father's favorite and from the age of ten, he was out of the house, peddling magazines and earning money. He counted on getting a job in a local cotton mill, but when it went to a foreman's son, Stoney took his savings and went to Chapel Hill, where he enrolled in college and never looked back. He worked his way through school, taking odd jobs andhitchhiking whenever he could. Feeling he didn't have much to lose--no socialstatus or family tradition to uphold--Stoney delighted in travelling, meeting and observing people, and writing about them. In time, he would discover how to turn his need for "freedom" and his skill as a storyteller into a way of life. He soon gave up the idea of becoming a librarian and concentrated on being a journalist, getting a job writing for the Raleigh [N.C.]News and Observer. Surrendering to his wanderlust, he joined the merchant marines, sailed to Rio, and eventually landed in New York where he freelanced for the New York Times and met Helen Hall of the Henry Street Settlement House.

At the height of the Depression Stoney went to Washington, D.C., where he worked with Ralph Bunche, who was then looking for evidence of a racial factorin Southern politics--or more bluntly put, how politicians kept blacks from voting. Stoney next worked for the Farm...

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