A new short documentary from WABE takes a closer look at the educational legacy of Dr. Benjamin E. Mays.
“We Expect Nothing Less: The Benjamin E. Mays Story” is a documentary led by producer/director Brianna Carr, shot by Jessica Silva, and edited by Victoria Bostic. The eight-minute film explores the legacy of Mays, a Civil Rights leader who served as a mentor to many, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He was also the president of Morehouse College from 1940 to 1967, and served as an advisor to Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Jimmy Carter.
Mays’ name can be found all over Atlanta, from street signs to high schools. Still, each of the three women said they knew relatively little about Mays before beginning work on the project. Roughly two years ago, Mays’ former secretary Carrie Dumas approached WABE to see if they would be interested in doing a documentary about him, but the timing wasn’t quite right.
“At the time, we didn’t have the resources or the time to take on the project, because we imagined that it would be a full half hour doc, or an hour doc,” Carr said. “We didn’t have the bandwidth at the time.”
But the opportunity to give Mays his due arose when WABE partnered with HBCU Week NOW, as well as Maryland Public Television and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The task was to do a story about an HBCU in a short format – just about eight or so minutes.
“Let’s see what we can do in that timeframe to awaken some curiosity among younger people about Dr. Mays and tell it through the lens of incoming freshman students at Morehouse,” Carr said.
The documentary opens with scenes from college campuses across the country over the past year, where numerous students have protested the war in Gaza and shown support for Palestinians in the region. Earlier this year, President Joe Biden gave the commencement speech at Morehouse, a decision that was met with backlash from those who disagreed with Biden’s handling of the war and his support for Israel.
During the graduation ceremony, Biden was met with silent protests by some students and faculty. Some turned their chairs away from the president as he delivered his address, and some graduates wore Palestinian flags and keffiyehs, a covering typically worn by men in the Middle East.
Carr said they chose to start the documentary with these images because they thought the way that Morehouse students chose to protest against the war in Gaza was in line with what’s called the “Morehouse mystique,” a phrase that defines the Morehouse community, and one that Mays helped coin.
“Morehouse did peaceful protesting in a different way compared to other universities across the nation and in Georgia,” Carr said. “Where did that come from? Is there a connection between that and Dr. Mays?”
The team wanted to create a documentary outside of the typical interview-led, talking heads format. After these initial scenes, the documentary follows a group of incoming freshmen as they learn about Mays and his legacy.
“On set, me and Brianna just kept going back to the word ‘ephemeral,’” said Silva. “We wanted the camera to embody the spirit of Dr. Mays, almost. Even the color choice was an homage to his time when he was president, leaning into those warmer tones.”
As the editor of the piece, Bostic wanted to make sure that all of the different aspects of the film – the audio, the visuals, everything – were put together in a way that emphasized their strengths.
“If you get to experience the short in the way that it was intended, great,” Bostic said. “But if you just hear a piece of it on the radio, you’re going to get something out of it. If you are scrolling through social media and you just happen to see it without sound, it’s still going to hit those emotions.”
While following the group of incoming freshmen throughout the campus, Silva said she could feel Mays’ influence.
“All of the people we interacted with demonstrated the qualities that Benjamin Mays attempted to instill in Morehouse,” Silva said. “All of the young men we talked to were so respectful, so kind, so helpful. It really added to the feeling of the film.”
This documentary might only be eight minutes long, but Carr said they hope to make a longer version of the Mays story. Last year, WABE launched a series called “(re)Defining History,” and plans to do a half-hour version of the documentary as part of that series.
You can learn more about the documentary and the rest of WABE’s HBCU-related programming online.
