Buffalo film: ‘And a Shot Rang Out’ tells tale of A.J. Smitherman and the Buffalo Star, will screen at Central Library

By Edvardi Jackson

Filmmaker Tala Harden did not set out to make a documentary.

The Buffalo native discovered the foundation for her upcoming film, And a Shot Rang Out, during an unrelated interview with historian and biographer Dr. Barbara Seals Nevergold, who had extensively researched the film’s subject. And a Shot Rang Out covers the life of A.J. Smitherman, publisher of the Tulsa Star in Tulsa, Okla. The newspaper’s offices, along with Smitherman’s home, were destroyed during the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre.

Smitherman later relocated to Buffalo, where he founded the Buffalo Star, which operated under that name until 1948. It later became the Empire Star before its final publication in 1953.

At the time, the Buffalo Star was one of the city’s most influential Black newspapers. The Buffalo Criterion sustained the city’s Black press for the next decade until The Challenger emerged in 1963. Today, both are among of the city’s ties to a tradition that helped shape the Civil Rights era.

The film will be screening on Saturday at the Buffalo-Erie County Public Library at 1 Lafayette Square at 1:30 p.m. There will be a post-screening discussion with filmmaker Harden and historian Nevergold. Attendees will be able to see original issues of the Buffalo Star from the Library’s collection.

Nevergold and Dr. Peggy Brooks-Bertram (who co-founded the Uncrowned Queens Institute for Research and Education on Women with her) unearthed archival evidence of Smitherman’s work in Buffalo in 2001 while doing research on the 1901 Pan-American Exposition, which took place in Buffalo. The research centered around the contributions women — particularly African-American women — provided to the event. But this research would also reveal the connection between Smitherman’s life in Buffalo and his earlier role as publisher of the Tulsa Star.

“We actually did the interview twice,” Harden said of her interviews with researchers. The original plan was to edit the conversation into short clips for social media, but Harden said the material felt too significant to condense.

“I was a terrible history student growing up,” she said. “But my parents did everything to make sure I was well educated. If I missed this story, I wondered how many other people missed it too.”

A later trip to Tulsa made her decision clear: This story should be a documentary.

“It turns out there are a lot of people in Tulsa who grew up there and never heard of the massacre,” Harden said.

Harden said the historical erasure reflects what she described as a broader effort to diminish Black wealth and achievement. 

“No one’s really sure who started the riot,” she said. “But it was like one shot rang out … and that set off the entire massacre.”

The phrase became the film’s title. 

This isn’t where Harden imagined herself to be a few years ago, though.

 “When I started my career journey, I was aiming to go into musical theatre,” she said. After starting college, she’d shift to exploring other fields, later landing on video production after acting as an extra on her friend’s film.

Later, Harden would return to Buffalo during COVID, landing a role at the Oishei Foundation, and later the Buffalo History Museum. Harden reflected on her time at the latter.

“Buffalo has so many connections all over the world that I just got more intrigued. That knowledge led me to eventually creating this documentary,” Harden said.

The project marks Harden’s first feature documentary, though she previously worked on smaller documentary projects while studying at SUNY Fredonia.

“It was a huge learning opportunity,” she said. “There were moments when I knew I wasn’t getting enough footage. I only had about 12 hours in Tulsa to film and conduct interviews. It was just me and my camera, walking around.”

If she could change one thing, Harden said, it would be having more time on the ground.

“The truth is valuable, and it’s necessary,” she said. “People are hungry for it.”

The film has been seen in limited screenings in Western New York since debuting at the Buffalo History Museum in 2024, but Harden is in talks for wider distribution. She also hopes to have it eventually air on public media.

“There are some opportunities for us to grow in [distribution], which we’re very excited for,” Harden said.