The Andrew Avery Collection at the Walter J. Brown Media Archives:
Andrew Avery was a Bainbridge resident, agriculturalist, Baptist, and educator. He depicts diverse aspects of life in Bainbridge and surrounding areas such as Climax and Attapulgus. He does this with greater ease than an outsider as he was a well-known figure in the community, so the subjects of his films allowed themselves to be filmed without a great deal of suspicion.
The bulk of what he filmed was scenes of farming and agricultural practices, local students, and schools. He also captured footage of various educational leaders in the area talking during the Decatur County Progress Exposition (though unfortunately, this footage is silent). Avery was a great advocate for both farming and education in South Georgia. Avery portrays various types of agriculture in the area, such as cane grinding, peanut farming, and tobacco farming, to cite just a few examples. He also filmed several churches of various denominations. These include Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians. This gives viewers a better idea of the types of religious beliefs that were dominant in the area at that time. Other things he filmed less often included local parades, church suppers, town events, classrooms (such as home economics and carpentry), gardens, the Jim Woodruff Dam, and much more. The Bainbridge and Decatur County census from this time period, as well as the Georgia USGenWeb Archives Project , has been useful in piecing together some of the histories of the families and areas that Avery filmed.
Some of the footage even depicts Franklin Delano Roosevelt speaking at the University of Georgia, as well as footage of Marvin Griffin (who was from Bainbridge) speaking in different situations. All of these are great examples that can be used in researching or getting a first-hand look at political history.
Avery’s footage of the local African American community in South Georgia is the most unique reel within this collection. The reason this is so historically important is because footage of this sort is unheard of during this time in the South. At this time, most African Americans could not afford their own home movie cameras, and not many southern whites were inclined to film African Americans using their own equipment. Avery, however, saw a need for this subject to be represented. He shot footage of African American engaged in school scenes, church scenes, and more. The screenshots below are some examples of the types of footage contained in the African American reel that Andrew Avery shot. These particular scenes depict the Johnson Memorial Hospital, an African American hospital built by Dr. Joesph Griffin, an African American physician.
Check out the page titled The OHMS Project: Making The Andrew Avery Collection Accessible to see what's being done with the collection!