The Barber of Birmingham (2011)

The Barber of Birmingham is a documentary film which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival of 2011.

The title is an echo of a famous opera The Barber of Seville by the Italian composer Rossini. Apart from the title, these two items have nothing in common.

The film is about the life and times of James Armstrong, who was for decades a foot soldier of the Civil Rights Movement in the US.

Here is some basic information about this film.

** Produced and directed by Gail Dolgin (1945-2010) and Robin Fryday

** Music by B. Quincy Griffin

** Run time: 25 minutes

Several people – including the barber – are interviewed in this film, even though it is quite short. Here are the names listed in alphabetical order:

** Floyd Armstrong – son of James Armstrong

** James Armstrong (1923-2009) – barber and civil rights activist

** Shirley Gavin Floyd (born 1953) – Civil Rights Activist Committee

** Pastor Carter Gaston

** Bernard LaFayette (born 1940) – co-founder of SNCC

** Amelia Boynton Robinson (1911-2015) – civil rights activist

** Faya Rose Touré (born 1945) – civil rights attorney

** Reverend C. T. Vivian (1924-2020)

Archive footage is used between the talking heads. Archive footage is used to supplement and support the statements made by the talking heads.

James Armstrong lived to be an old man. He lived long enough to see a black man (Barack Obama) win the presidential election of November 2008. He planned to attend the inauguration of President Obama in January 2009, but his health did not allow him to do this. He died in November of that year.

During his long life he was often in a dangerous situation. He could have been killed, but he survived. Why did he put himself in danger? Because he felt he had to stand up for himself and for others; he felt he had to defend his own rights and the rights of others.

In the film, he explains why he did this; why he would sometimes place himself in a situation where he might have been killed:

“Dying ain’t the worst thing a man can do. I often think the worst thing a man can do is live for nothing. I want to live for a purpose.”

What do reviewers say about this film? On IMDb it has a rating of 69 percent which corresponds to 3.5 stars on Amazon.

It was named Best Short Documentary at the Ashland Independent Film Festival.

If you ask me, the rating on IMDb is too low. This film deserves more. Why? I have three reasons:

# 1. The topic is important

# 2. The story is told very well

# 3. You cannot say this film is too long!

I want to go all the way to the top with this product. I think it deserves a rating of five stars (100 percent).

PS # 1. In March 2018, a historical marker was unveiled by community leaders and members of the Birmingham City Council commemorating the life and legacy of James Armstrong.

The marker reads as follows:

On September 4, 1963, Graymont Elementary School was the first public school in Birmingham to be racially integrated.

Two brothers, nine and eleven years old, accompanied by their father, James Armstrong, along with Rev. Fred L. Shuttlesworth and attorney Oscar Adams Jr., became the first African Americans to register in an all-white city school.

The 1963 desegregation of Graymont Elementary, as well as West End High and Ramsay High in the same year came in response to a court suit challenging Birmingham’s segregated school system.

The case had been initiated by James Armstrong in 1960, but it was not until three years later that the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court compelled the school board to admit black students.