Desert Nights, Rising Stars Writers Conference Faculty 2019
Piper Writers Studio Instructor 2018
De Felitta, Raymond. "Booker's Place." Journeyman Pictures, 2014. See also Finding Booker's Place on NBC Dateline.
When Frank De Felitta travelled to Mississippi in the 60s to make a film for NBC News, he came across a black waiter with something to say about segregation. As Booker's words broadcast across America, they stirred up a hornet's nest. Forty-five years on, Frank's son returns with Booker's granddaughter, to find out what role his five minutes of fame played in his tragic life.
Goodman, Amy. "'Booker's Place': Documentary Tells Story of Black Mississippi Waiter Who Lost Life by Speaking Out." Democracy Now, April 30, 2012.
YVETTE JOHNSON: Well, in about—it was about 2007 when I first learned that my grandfather appeared on the news. And originally, the way the story was told to me, I thought that it was sort of a “man on the street” interview, that he was walking down the street and that maybe someone from the 5:00 news put a mic in his face and that he just said something sort of provocative and then went on his way. It wasn’t until I connected with Raymond that I actually got to see the film for myself and realized that what he said was so composed and thoughtful.
Johnson, Yvette. Excerpt from The Song and the Silence. Atria Books, Simon and Schuster, January 2018.
On any given Saturday night in the ’50s and ’60s, the place to be for Blacks in Greenwood, Mississippi, was a little spot called Booker’s Place down on McLaurin Street. In those days, McLaurin was lined with darkly lit, poorly maintained one-room bars and juke joints where shootings, stabbings, and robberies were regular weekend occurrences, but Booker’s Place was different.
Lee, Felicia. "A Film Settles Accounts From the '60s." New York Times, April 20, 2012.
Booker Wright, a black waiter in a whites-only restaurant in Greenwood, Miss., neither protested nor preached as the civil rights movement of the 1960s roiled the Delta. But the film “Booker’s Place: A Mississippi Story,” scheduled to premiere on Sunday at the Tribeca Film Festival, portrays him as one of the small heroes of that grand movement.
His feat: He dropped his mask of servility in a 1966 television documentary about the state, admitting that he was “crying on the inside” as he kowtowed to customers who sometimes denied him tips and uttered racial slurs. “The meaner the man be, the more you smile,” he explains.
