Black History in San Antonio: Melaneyes Media’s Message and Mission

November 21, 2020 - San Antonio

By Valeria Torrealba, Staff Intern, San Antonio Sentinel

With a rich and thriving Black history running deep through the roots of the city of San Antonio, learning opportunities arise at every intersection, leaving its residents with curiosity and storytellers with a platform to grow and educate in.

Melaneyes Media, co-founded by Logic Allah and Aundar Ma’at, strives to keep Black history alive and well-known in San Antonio. With what started out as a documentary film that would sell out the Alamo Drafthouse, Allah and Ma’at have built a business from scratch that provides its audience with ample and rich education regarding Black history in San Antonio. 

“We really got our start in February of 2017 when we released a film called Message to the People: A story of Malcolm X,” said Allah. “We premiered it and released it here in San Antonio. It went over really well, it actually sold out, and my wife talked us into doing it again. We did it again, it sold out again — and we thought to ourselves, we might be onto something.”

The success of the documentary film brought Allah and Ma’at new, creative and immersive ideas to showcase Black history. 

“We had the idea to create Walk on the River: A Black History of the Alamo City,” said Allah. “Which would document the Black history specifically in San Antonio. At that time, there were complaints and rumblings that the city was not doing enough to recognize the Black contributions to the city. Even before we heard those rumblings, we had tossed around the idea of just highlighting Black history here — we had come to find that there was so much here.”

From that point on, Allah and Ma’at sought to interview as many prospects as possible, building a foundation for the documentary in production. The craft was met with much success and appreciation, further propelling the conversation regarding the vast contributions of the Black community in San Antonio. Over 600 people attended the premiere, sparking a partnership between the City and the business. Colleges and universities arose to the opportunity as well. 

Melaneyes, a play on the term “melanize” — which means to blacken or infuse with melanin, the chemical that gives dark people their skin pigmentation — combined the darker physical trait with that of the eyes, all in a way to demonstrate the message and mission of the company: to educate and amplify the Black perspective as it relates to history. Allah and Ma’at took their showings to a further level: a tour bus highlighting historical landmarks in San Antonio.

“In January of 2019, as a dream, we decided to put together a test Black history bus tour,” said Allah. “We went to about 25 locations on the east side, primarily, and that went over really well. We ended up doing it consequently every other month after that, booking private and public tours. The film was a great compliment to the tour. They worked hand-in-hand.” 

A fundamental way of not repeating history is to learn it. This is a belief that Allah, Ma’at and Deborah Omowale Jarmon, the executive director of the San Antonio African American Community Archive (SAAACA), all hold. 

“Anyone of color, anyone that is not from an Anglo society, their history has been marginalized,” said Jarmon during a summer interview highlighting her organization. “From Jewish people, to Native Americans, to Asians to Latinos, which makes it very interesting being in a city that is a majority LatinX. I think just exploring that history and understanding the impact that it’s had in our country is so important.”

Sparking up the conversation of racism is, simply put, difficult. With a multitude of different approaches to the topic, the question as to which method remains the most substantial and practical arises. Melaneyes Media encapsulates this knowledge and, even during the COVID-19 pandemic, maintains a national and international audience. 

“We backtrack throughout the Black experience here in San Antonio during and before slavery [in Walk the River 2.0],” said Allah. “[And] how African people have directly affected and shaped the culture of San Antonio. [Our documentaries] have a wide scope of history. As COVID-19 hit, we were just releasing [the 2.0] and it stopped us from promoting it, it stopped us from going to the theaters and doing our run like we had planned. We didn’t know what to do with ourselves — we thought we might have to fold as a company.” 

Through online outlets such as Zoom, however, Allah and Ma’at were able to overcome some — but not all — of the difficulties that came with a statewide lockdown. With bus tours not being advisable anymore, the two filmmakers had to shift the entirety of their business model online. 

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“At first, I thought that [Zoom] wasn’t going to work,” said Allah. “I wasn’t sure people were going to want to pay to watch a film online. We gave it a test, though, and it actually really worked out well the first time. We earned money. Zoom became a viable platform. So, we started showing our original films online. It was well received, so we just started transitioning ourselves to being online.”

Due to the success of shifting content delivery online, Allah and Ma’at decided to test the waters and deliver not just documentaries, but also courses online. The online module provides a variety of material in which Melaneyes Media constructed an educational platform that helps the student “better understand the history and viability” of various parts of Black history in San Antonio, and the U.S. overall. 

“We started creating historical presentations,” said Allah. “They were a [combination] of presentations: interviews, slides, videos. After [George Floyd’s murder], there was a desire — people wanted more of a history, of Black content, more of an understanding of the Black struggle. We started getting a lot of attention. We’re keeping our eyes and opportunities open. As a company, we’re positioning ourselves to be able to go with the flow.” 

Every other week, on Sundays and Tuesdays, Melaneyes Media goes live on Zoom and does a Black historical presentation for its audience. The interactive presentations continue to fulfill Allah and Ma’at’s mission, with each presentation bringing a combination of mediums to inform the international audiences. 

“We realized the content of our presentations could be translated into a course easily,” said Allah. “People want to learn about other cultures, people want to understand the experiences of their people. This is an opportune time for us to capitalize and do our best to convey what we have gone through as a people. Our nation is facing two separate struggles: one is a financial and social problem compounded by the pandemic, and we’re also going into a cultural shift — it’s an opportunity to continue to teach and start telling our own stories. We need to be out here telling our own stories so we’re not dependent on other people to tell them.”

Throughout the last few years, marginalized communities have come together to learn their own history within the U.S., as well as grown stronger with the bond of their history. 

“The Black community has morphed and changed, and grown to a lot of complexity: it’s not as monolithic,” said Allah. “I think that there are different ways to tell that story. The one thing that we can never escape is our history, and the numbers, statistics and facts. Regardless of what happens, we can always find an instance of how success can be duplicated and replicated now.”

Melaneyes Media continues to amplify the stories of the Black community through its online platform. With various upcoming events, Allah remains hopeful for the future — both of storytelling and filmmaking, all while teaching their audience along. Currently in the works is a documentary film in partnership with Texas A&M University, where the disproportionate maternal mortality rate amongst the Black community will be explored. More information on the film can be found here. Also, on the docket of upcoming events is “Real Black Friday: An Online Black History Marathon” set to take place on Friday, Nov. 27 at 6 p.m. 

Jarmon also stressed the importance of driving the dialogue of racism and its existence, further allowing for deeper comprehension of the matter. 

“It’s important to do right now because as a child, and especially as a child where you don’t have conversations about discrimination, racism regularly in your home, it’s certainly confusing to watch the news, watch the protests, to sign into social media and see what’s going on,” Jarmon said during an interview this past summer. 

For now, the conversation must continue; for if we do not learn history, we are only prone to repeat it. 

Valeria Torrealba is an opinions columnist and public relations assistant at the University Star, a student publication of Texas State University. Email her at reporter@sasentinel.com