Black Mountain filmmaker to show documentary at White Horse

When Black Mountain resident Carolyn Crowder was growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, she said was raised in a “bigoted” family, especially when it came to race.

“We were so brainwashed full of hate,” Crowder said. “I wasn’t hateful, but I did feel superior. I never treated anybody bad, but my parents did.”

Crowder said she grew up Presbyterian, and her views on race changed when she heard from some ministers at a church summer camp. While some ministers were of the same school of thought as her parents when it came to race, Crowder said she was drawn to those who were taking a stand against racism.

“I was so grateful for their influence in my life because it was something I’d never heard before,” Crowder said. “It made me stop and think.”

Crowder is a graduate of Auburn University but eventually left the South to pursue graduate degrees and different ways of life. She did eventually make her way back to the region and, in 2015, started recording interviews with some of these ministers who she described as taking a stand against racism during the 1960s.

She teamed up with local producer and filmmaker Rod Murphy to do these interviews and they eventually created “At the River,” a two-hour documentary exploring the white Presbyterian ministers who took a stand against racism in the South during the Civil Rights Movement.

The film covers the years 1958 through 1968 and tells the story of 35 different Presbyterian ministers. Crowder said she could have included other denominations as well, but wanted to focus on Presbyterian ministers because that is the denomination she grew up in.

“Every denomination, the Methodists, the Baptists, the Episcopalians, had guys like this during that time in the Deep South that did good things and risked a lot,” Crowder said. “It’s the civil rights story that’s not very well known unless you were in one of those churches that went through all of that tumult with their minister.”

Crowder said she was surprised at just how many ministers she found that “did the right thing.” She said she knew of fewer than 10 from her own experience, but through interviewing them she found others.

In conducting her interviews, said she was struck by ministers combination of being “modest and brave.”

“They believed in what they were doing,” Crowder said. “I know for a fact they changed a lot of young people who were watching. We were watching them and seeing how brave they were and why they were being brave.”

Once filming was completed, the team sat down to edit, but lost a year due to the pandemic.

The finances for the film came almost solely from Crowder, with some donations. She said she wanted to steer away from grants because she wanted to make the film her own way on her own schedule.

Crowder said the film’s reach has “mushroomed” and spread through word-of-mouth advertising. She and Murphy have spent the last year traveling with the film and showing it across the country, from Texas to Maine.

At 76, Crowder said she has no plans to stop making documentaries and has ideas for at least two more. She said she made “At the River” as a “gift” to the Southern Presbyterian Church because it helped her in her intellectual and emotional development.

A screening of “At the River” will be hosted at White Horse Black Mountain on Aug. 27 starting at 3 p.m. Tickets are $8 and can be purchased at whitehorseblackmountain.com.

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