Beaumont's Black History: The Example

Set during the 1943 Beaumont Texas Race Riot, The Example tells a story of two fathers who make hard choices to protect their families.  Choices that force them to question their morals, loyalty, and manhood.  The award-winning short film is directed by Wyatt Cagle, written by Gordon S. Williams, and produced by Kenneth Dupuis. The ensemble cast includes actors Jeremy Allen, Kedrick Brown, Emma Van Lare, Marc Isaacs, Kate Robards, Evan Horsley, & Daniel Stallings.

“The Example” has been accepted into over thirty film festivals/venues across the United States and Canada. The project has received distribution from Amazon Video, Indiefix, KweliTv, DirectTV, Comcast Xfinity, Cox Broadcasting, and other platforms.  “The Example” has been screened as part of an academic presentation at Lee College, Lamar University, San Antonio College, The Montrose School, and St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia that included a lecture and question and answer session with the filmmaker(s). 

The Beaumont Race Riot of 1943
Shrouded in mystery, a race riot occurred in June 1943 in Beaumont, a major shipbuilding port during World War II. The ship building industry brought various races to the area. Issues such as overcrowding, poor living and work conditions, food shortages, forced integration and racial hostility led to strong tensions in the community between Blacks and Whites.

During June 1943, the Black community was preparing their Juneteenth Celebration. Ten days later, the Ku Klux Klan had scheduled their regional convention in the area. To add to this powder keg, one rape and one alleged rape involving black males assaulting white women occurred. One of the women was a daughter of a shipyard worker. Enraged, over two thousand shipyard workers and close to a thousand citizens ransacked homes and businesses in the black section of downtown Beaumont.

The Texas State Guard and The Texas Rangers placed the city under martial law for three days. More than two hundred people were arrested, fifty injured and three perished as a result of the riot. Rumors ran rampant that there were dead bodies floating in the Neches River and that the entire event was a Nazi plot to halt shipbuilding efforts during World War II. Large numbers of Black citizens left the city immediately. Close to 210,000 labor hours of essential war production was lost during this event.

Gordon S. Williams is the Lamar University Television Studio Operations Manager and adjunct instructor for LUTV News. He is an award-winning content creator whose projects have screened at over seventy film festivals and earned distribution deals from entities such as Amazon Video and Shorts International. In February 2021, he was selected as the “Entertainment Honoree” by the Southeast Texas Martin Luther King, Jr. Support Group for his contributions to the area. In October 2021, Williams was asked to participate as a presenter for the East Texas Historical Association meeting to talk about “The Example.” In March 2023, he presented research on the 1943 Beaumont Race Riot at the Texas State Historical Association Meeting in El Paso. Gordon is a board member of the Boomtown Film Festival, the Center for Culture and History of Southeast Texas and the Upper Gulf Coast, and an advisor for the Jefferson County Historical Commission.