Jessie Maple, who built a career as a camerawoman and independent filmmaker when black women were almost non-existent in that field, and who then left meticulous instructions for later generations to follow in her footsteps, died May 30 at her Atlanta home. She turned 86.
Her death was confirmed by E. Danielle Butler, her longtime assistant and the co-author of her 2019 self-published memoir, “The Maple Crew.”
Director and camerawoman were just two of Mrs. Maple’s many jobs. She also worked as a bacteriologist; wrote a newspaper column; own coffee shops; baked vegan cookies; and ran a 50-seat theater in the basement of her brown sandstone in Harlem.
Ms. Maple wrote a column called Jessie’s Grapevine for The New York Courier, a Harlem newspaper, when she switched to broadcast journalism from print media in the early 1970s because she wanted to reach more people.
After studying film editing in programs at WNET, New York’s public television station, and Third World Cinema, actor Ossie Davis’ film company, and as an apprentice editor on the Gordon Parks films “Shaft’s Big Score!” (1972) and “The Super Cops” (1974), Ms. Maple realized she longed to be behind the camera.
In 1975, she became the first African-American woman to join New York’s cinematographers union (now called the International Cinematographers Guild), according to Indiana University’s Black Film Center and Archive, which maintains a collection of her papers and films . But, she said, the union banned her after she fought to change the rules that required her to complete a lengthy apprenticeship.
“If I waited, I never would have become a cameraman,” Ms. Maple told DailyExpertNews for a 2016 article about women breaking barriers to work for film crews. “So I took them to court.”
She sued several New York television stations in the mid-1970s for discrimination based on sex and race, and she won a 1977 lawsuit against WCBS that earned her a trial with the station. That grew into a freelance career there and with the local ABC and NBC stations.
Ms. Maple wrote that she had to deal with crew members who would not work with her and that there was muttering behind her back, sometimes quite audible. But she persevered, even when she was given assignments that felt particularly difficult – flying in a helicopter almost daily to take aerial photos, for example, even though she had motion sickness.
In 1977, Ms. Maple wrote about her experiences in How to Become a Union Camerawoman, a detailed guide to succeeding in a prohibitive industry.
But as TV news moved from film to video, Ms. Maple decided she’d rather be an independent filmmaker, with complete control over her work. She made short documentaries with her husband Leroy Patton, including “Methadone: Wonder Drug or Evil Spirit?” before turning to feature films.
Ms. Maple said she wanted to make films about issues that mattered to her community.
“I want to tell the stories of things that bother me that might otherwise go untold,” she wrote in her memoir. “I strive to use the resources around me. Most importantly, I work to give a voice to my people and the challenges we face.”
According to the Black Film Center and Archive, Ms. Maple was the first known African American woman to produce, write and direct an independent feature film. That film, “Will” (1981), follows a former college basketball player struggling with addiction (played by Obaka Adedunyo) who takes in a 12-year-old boy to prevent him from developing a habit of his own. Loretta Devine played Will’s other half in her first film role.
Ms. Maple’s second feature film, “Twice as Nice” (1989), was the story of twin sisters, both college basketball luminaries, as they prepare to enter a professional draft. The film starred Pamela and Paula McGee, twins who won back-to-back NCAA basketball championships at the University of Southern California, but were not professional actors.
In 1982, Mrs. Maple and Mr. Patton opened a theater to show “Will” and other independent films in the basement of their brownstone on 120th Street in Harlem. They called it 20 West, branded it “the cradle of black cinema” and showed films by newcomers like Spike Lee. They closed it about a decade later — because, she said, she wanted to focus more on her own movies.
Ms. Maple’s films have received more recognition in recent years than when they were released. In 2015, the Museum of Modern Art exhibited “Will”; that same year, the Film Society of Lincoln Center (now Film at Lincoln Center) screened both of her feature films as part of a series called “Tell It Like It Is: Black Independents in New York, 1968-1986.”
Mrs. Maple was born on February 14, 1937, in McComb, Miss., about 50 miles south of Jackson, the second oldest of 12 children. Her father was a farmer, her mother a teacher and dietitian.
Her father died when she was 13, and her mother sent her and many of her siblings to the Northeast, where she attended high school.
After high school she studied medical technology and then started working in bacteriology. She ended up running a lab at the Hospital for Joint Diseases and Medical Center (now part of New York University’s hospital system) in Manhattan, while the hospital administration looked for a permanent replacement because, she wrote, she did not have a Ph.D. . She was credited with leading the preliminary identification of a new strain of bacteria; during her lunch breaks she joined other lower-paid workers who tried to organize themselves.
It was a steady, well-paid job, but Mrs. Maple, who was married with a young daughter, was tired of the job and left bacteriology in 1968 to pursue journalism. She was on a magazine assignment in Texas when she met Mr. Patton, a photographer for Jet and Ebony magazines who lived in Los Angeles, and they developed a bicoastal relationship.
Mrs. Maple was divorced from her husband; Mr. Patton still lived with his wife. In time, they divorced their husbands and got married, and Mr. Patton moved to Manhattan. (Ms. Maple was sometimes billed as Jessie Maple Patton in her film work.)
Mrs. Maple is survived by her husband; her daughter, Audrey Snipes; five sisters, Lorrain Crosby, Peggy Lincoln, Debbie Reed, Camilla Clarke Doremus, and Stephanie Robinson; and a grandson.
Mrs. Maple worked relentlessly to achieve her dreams. She supplemented her income through, among other things, two Harlem coffee shops that she ran with Mr. Patton and a line of vegan cookies that she made in the 1990s, which were eventually available at retailers on the East Coast.
“I was too busy with work to slow down,” she wrote in her memoir. “I’d like to believe that my efforts paved the way for the people behind me to work just as hard, but struggle a little less.”
