MEMPHIS, TN – Two hours may be a little long for a funeral. But since it was George Whitaker Tillman’s funeral, time wasn’t a factor for those who extolled Tillman as a top-notch athlete and par excellence filmmaker.
“George was a borderline genius,” Tillman’s eulogist, Dr. Noel G. L. Hutchinson Jr., declared. “I want us to reflect on who we had among us,” he told the assembly at First Baptist Church-Lauderdale.
Tillman died from congestive heart failure on Sept. 12. He was 71.
He was the consummate filmmaker, documentarian, and “trendsetter,” said Hutchinson, and added: “The Lord moved upon George to tell our stories — such as ‘The Lucky Eleven.’”
“The Lucky Eleven” chronicles the journey of 11 Southside High School graduates in Memphis who played football for Fisk University in the early 1970s. Tillman was a teammate who matriculated at Fisk on both a track and football scholarship.
“Out of the Lucky Eleven, six of us went to the NFL,” said Andre Jackson, a member of the football team at Fisk. “Now it’s only three of us left out of the eleven.”
A knee injury sidelined Tillman during his senior year, thus ending a promising football career and an opportunity to play for the Green Bay Packers. This and other reflections were recounted by those who knew him well. “George was a man of all seasons who fulfilled his purpose,” said Dr. David L. Acey Sr., a longtime educator, activist, and co-founder of the African in April Cultural Awareness Festival, Inc.
While Tillman was passionate about football, it was fate that steered him down the path to filmmaking after watching the movie “Wattstax” with his classmates. This time, his passion was kindled with a purpose.
Memphis and Shelby County Film Commissioner Lynn Sitler had no idea that Tillman was a star athlete on the gridiron. But she knew of his work behind the camera documenting Black history.
“He did it in such a way that everybody wanted to learn,” she said.
Sitler recalled her first time meeting Tillman in the late 1980s when he was a newbie in filmdom promoting “The Last Buffalo Soldier,” a story about an all-Black regiment of the U.S. Army in 1866.
“I had never heard of the Buffalo Soldiers,” she said. “That’s how important George’s work was.”
Tillman began creating movies and writing scripts in 1987. In 1988, Sitler introduced him to Steven J. Ross, professor emeritus of film and video at the University of Memphis. Ross’s mentorship proved beneficial to Tillman’s expanded knowledge of filmmaking.
“That pretty much launched George’s film career,” Sitler said.
George Barnes said he and Tillman were longtime friends and “dreamers,” and pursued different goals as adults.
“I was a hairdresser. He was a filmmaker,” he said. “We had a lot in common.”
Tillman was known to recruit his friends to work with him on film projects. “He was relentless in his pursuit of what he wanted to do,” said Barnes, who worked with Tillman on “Birth of Soul Music” and “Jump Rope Girls.”
Barnes had so much to say about his friend but was admonished to cut his reflections short. “You can’t tell it all,” someone in the pulpit quipped.
Hutchinson was now ready to deliver Tillman’s eulogy and began with these words: “Every life preaches a sermon.” Then he gave his message a title: “The world was not worthy of George Tillman.”
Hutchinson surmised that no one else was documenting Black history when Tillman began his film career. “Look at what George went through to tell our story,” he said, referencing the obstacles that would stop others in their tracks.
Even though funding for Tillman’s projects was often insufficient, or non-existent — in addition to his struggle with an illness — he was compelled to tell stories anyway in spite of the obstacles and naysayers.
“You have to embrace who you are,” Hutchinson told the assembly. “You can’t let people define who you are. We have to tell our stories and more of them.”
