DESCRIPTION: African American epidemiologist and health researcher Sherman James is known for his concept “John Henryism,” which attributes the premature deaths of African Americans to prolonged exposure to the stresses of discrimination and racism. The name of his hypothesis is based on the American folk hero, John Henry, the Black “steel-driving man” circa 1870. John Henry was purported to have raced against a steam-powered rock-drilling machine, and he won, but died from the effort.

–Univ. of Washington, School of Public Health

I worked in collaboration with Nadia Sussman, Nina Martin and Akilah Johnson on a collection of stories that won a number of awards, including the National Magazine Award (ASME). The ASME Award was in the Coverage of Race in America category for “How COVID-19 Hollowed Out a Generation of Young Black Men” and “Black Men Have the Shortest Lifespans of Any Americans. This Theory Helps Explain Why.”  I co-produced, directed, and animated a story based on an audio-only interview with Dr. Sherman James for this project. The animation also won a National Press Photographer’s Association’s Best of Photojournalism award: Online Video Storytelling – Race and Identity in America – Large and Small Team First Place.

For this project, I made a final edit of the script, hired and supervised an illustrator and a second animator, worked on a storyboard with the illustrator, created an animatic (animated storyboard), gave detailed lists and descriptions to the illustrator on all of the elements that I would need for the animation, provided rough animations and bits of coding to the second animator to refine the movement in the last part of the animation (leaves falling), and then animated everything together at the end of the process in the course of a few days. Start to finish we were given just two weeks to complete the 2:40-long animation.