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Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU. And as we continue to celebrate Black History Month, we are highlighting people who make a difference in our community. Today, my guest is Aliyah Mitchell, and she is an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based filmmaker and photographer. She's also a language enthusiast. Aliyah, thank you for joining us today!
Aliyah Mitchell: Thank you for inviting me to have a conversation with you!
Caroline MacGregor: It's good to have you here! And first of all, I just want to touch on your background. Tell me what prompted you to pursue the path of filmmaking.
Aliyah Mitchell: I mean, it seems like a cliche response, but it felt really natural to tell stories that I wanted to tell. Like, growing up, I was really intellectually and creatively free, if you will. My parents were like, "Go do whatever makes your heart happy," kind of. I'm paraphrasing, but that's what it really felt like. And I gravitated towards storytelling as a really amazing outlet. It's something that they tell you to do. If you want to see a story, go out there and write it. Go out and create it. So I'm like, "Okay, let's do it!"
Caroline MacGregor: Tell me a little bit about your experience as an independent filmmaker from the perspective of a Black woman, challenges that you may have run into along the way, any obstacles you have faced as a Black woman.
Aliyah Mitchell: Yeah, I would say that there are lots of charms and challenges to being a Black woman filmmaker, specifically doing smaller projects as an independent filmmaker, meaning I've got smaller budgets, typically smaller crews. But I find that working a little bit harder for the story because there's a little less money or a bit of a smaller crew, means the reward at the end is that much greater. I find there are more rewards in being chosen to be trusted with stories that are lesser told or lesser known. It's super powerful, it's a joy, it's a responsibility, and it's super-rewarding!
Caroline MacGregor: I've heard that some of your favorite projects entail those that examine identity, belonging, and also the language experiences of marginalized groups. I know that one of the films or documentaries that you worked on was "Right to Read". Tell me about this. It sounds fascinating.
Aliyah Mitchell: Yeah. To answer your first question about how do I find these projects, they're all out there. And I'd like to think that, by serendipity, they float over to me, and I'm paying attention long enough to grab them out of the air and put something together. And I say it was by serendipity that I was invited to create a short film known as "Right to Read: The Ann Arbor King Case" for Ann Arbor 200. Before that, I had been working on "We Are What We Speak," which is a documentary project, but also a podcast project where we talk all about language and identity. And the Right to Read case was interesting because it was about a lawsuit brought on the behalf of 11 Black students at King Elementary in 1977. And it was one of the first times in my own research that language was litigated in a courtroom. The language experience of these students really impacted their literacy, their reading, their sense of belonging in the classroom and their academic success.
Caroline MacGregor: I believe that these children came from homes where they basically had a different dialect, and it impacted their learning of English to a point where it really lessened their ability to read.
Aliyah Mitchell: Yeah. It was a complicated case in that one of the things that the lawyers had to do on behalf of the children is first establish that there was a difference in dialect being spoken. But then, you have to determine that that difference is large enough that it impacts their learning experiences. And so, I was so lucky to be able to speak to the amazing, the powerful Dr. Geneva Smitherman, who is known as the mother of Black language because it was through her work and the work of many other amazing linguists to help the court understand, yes, Black language is indeed a language. It has its own grammar, structures and rules. Subsequently, that needed to be taken into account when teaching these young students to read. Because it was really about their ability to read, their ability to comprehend, and then their ability then to do the work. And so, the court found that there was a duty to take this information into account in teaching them how to read. Again, throughout the course of working on that film, I was able to speak with people who do work and do research into early childhood literacy, but also into linguistics and the ability to code switch or switch between dialects, understanding them and speaking them. It wasn't necessarily lost on these kids. It was sort of manifest in lost opportunities. I spoke to a couple who were then students who recounted being looked over in class, taken seriously when they had issues or answers that they could provide in class. So, it's also about a loss of the opportunity to participate, which is crucial in your academic journey, being able to contribute in the classroom, for example. So, it sort of manifested in more ways than did they literally speak such a vastly different language that an interpreter was needed? No, it wasn't that different. It was more so an offshoot of also how they were treated as young Black people.
Caroline MacGregor: And I know that in your filmmaking, you conducted an incredible amount of research and conversations with people for the documentaries or films that you make. We have discussed this before, but, most recently, you directed the short documentary film, 'A Ripple in Ann Arbor." This has drawn widespread acclaim for highlighting racial profiling, in this case, in the 1990s. This film tells the story of the search for a serial rapist in Ann Arbor in the 1990s and the unfocused and invasive tactics that were used by police at the time to find the perpetrator. And it also centered on the innocent man who took the city to court to expose these tactics and basically reclaim his dignity. In the making of this film, in addition to the incredible research and conversations you conducted, how did the making this movie affect you on a personal level?
Aliyah Mitchell: Yes, this is a good question. And so, I'm not a journalist, but I am a documentarian. You know what I mean? And so, I try to approach my work in a balanced way. I like to think that I naturally do that. And I'm grateful for people who have seen the film, who've said it was a balanced film. And so, it can be hard to assess personal effects when you're talking about something as intense as what these men experienced during the Ann Arbor dragnet. I will say something that personally affected me was I think how easily some of the men were drawn into it. They happened to be going somewhere at night that day that they were pulled over stops. They were going about their daily lives, and it was interrupted. And the knowledge that that could happen to people that I know, my brothers, my uncles, my cousins, myself, the knowledge that that continues to happen today. I think that was something that affected me personally when making this and reading and talking to so many of the people who are affected by this: mothers who are nervous and afraid for their sons, sisters who are afraid for the brothers. It's hard to overlook that impact.
Caroline MacGregor: This documentary, "A Ripple in Ann Arbor," it's just ironic that the person central to this story, Blair Shelton, was actually pulled out of a Target store last year, 2025, days before he sat down with you for the conversations that you wanted to have with him regarding what took place in the 1990s when he was racially profiled.
Aliyah Mitchell: Yes. And can you imagine the guts it took for him to, first of all, say, "Aliyah, I'm going to trust you with telling this story. I'm going be vulnerable with you." And then, to also have this incident occur where it's pulling out all of these feelings and emotions, bringing that all back. A social scientist who I interviewed for the film who talked about the mental health load of this, because that's a really important component, it was just like this moment of it's still happening. That was sort of the sentiment that really started our interview. It adds fuel to the flame. We want to tell people to heal or to move on or move forward, but we haven't reckoned with the past or the present when we tell them those things. And I was incredibly lucky to sit down for this film with not just Blair and others, but with Dr. Daphne C. Watkins, who as a social scientist who's dedicate her career to setting the mental health of Black men, because through that conversation, she helps me and others understand the impacts of these interactions, that there is a toll physically and mentally when Black men experience these things. It's not just, "You survived, so move forward," or "You weren't killed, so why are you still upset, or why are you experiencing things like depression?" or stuff like that. She helps us understand that there is a measurable impact on their minds and their bodies after these types of experiences.
Caroline MacGregor: Just quickly, to wrap up here, one of your other films that you worked on was "A Dreaming Angel." Tell me a little bit about this.
Aliyah Mitchell: This is an interesting project. This was an experimental film, "A Dreaming Angel" or "Un Angel Soñador". It's a film that I've been lucky enough to work with cartoonist Phoebe Gluckner for several years, actually, I've helping her put some of this together since 2016, when I first came to Ann Arbor. You know, this is a film that focuses on a family she met when visiting Mexico, whose daughter was missing and ultimately determined deceased. For me, their story really represents a microcosm of the situation for women and girls in Mexico, missing women and girls, missing and murdered women in Mexico, which the United States has to reckon with that history as well because we also have a large population, a large percentage of missing indigenous women and girls, missing Black women and girls that we have to deal with. So, that project really took a deep dive into these stories and histories that we don't, I think, know enough about.
Caroline MacGregor: Absolutely! And in closing, what would your advice be to young Black filmmakers entering the industry today?
Aliyah Mitchell: I would say to young emerging Black filmmakers today, I would say, tell the stories that you want to tell. And that could be in the nonfiction space, that could be sci-fi, that can be comedy, that could be trauma. Sometimes, as Black filmmakers, we're told that we have a responsibility and a duty to tell some of the most painful stories of our ancestry, because, without us, who's going to tell it? And to some degree, that's true that we have a responsibility to raise up and signal boost stories that others either won't tell or can't tell the same way. But I would also say tell the stories that you feel drawn to, that you fell connected with, and those may or may not be the same as the ones that are the most painful to focus on. We still have to have joy and fulfillment when we're telling these stories.
Caroline MacGregor: My guest today has been Aliyah Mitchell. She's an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based filmmaker and photographer, also a language enthusiast. Thank you so much for joining us today!
Aliyah Mitchell: Thank you! And Happy Black History Month!
Caroline MacGregor: This is 89.1 WEMU FM Ypsilanti.
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