This is a trailer for a documentary about The New Orleans Sniper of 73. His name Mark Robert Essex known by his family as Lil Jimmy. The people talking are Mark Essex's Mother, family members and friends in Wichita, Kansas where he grew up. Also, seen is archival footage from the actually scene of the incident in New Orleans. Mark Essex was his name. He started out as a meek and innocent young man during his teen years, but he ran head first into the injustices of the early 70's. He faced 2 years of constant and unimaginable racism in the Navy during the early 70's which prevented him from doing his job as a dental assistant. The overt racism he faced turned the meek into a Brave heart of epic proportions. Feeling Hopeless, Mark went AWOL and joined the Black Panther Party in NYC. Years later, he viewed Southern University Students killed by police doing a peaceful protest. It wasn't called Black Lives Matter then, but it's the same struggle for Black People living in an unjust Nation built on extorted labor. Before Travon Martin, Mike Brown Freddie Gray, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, Orlando Castile,Alton Sterling and so many other unarmed Black People that were killed by the police in recent years, Denver Smith and Leonard Brown were two College Students peacefully protesting on Southern Campus when police shot them. No investigation and charges has ever been brought up. This same bloody cycle has been going on in this country since police were invented as Slave Catchers,killing Run away enslaved people. Police kill and they don't go to jail or have a trial. They get a paid vacation or a desk job, a reward for taking lives. After they are found innocent, they get a promotion and a pay raise. Witnessing so many injustices, Mark was pushed into the kitchen of his mind making him brew up his own plan for justice just like Micah Xavier Johnson, Gavin Eugene Long also known as Cosmo Setepenra,, Shannon J. Miles and many others. Before them Nat Turner meet unchecked violent injustice in the best way he knew how. (Watch Nate Parker, Birth of a Nation to grab more incite) On the wall in his apartment in New Orleans, Mark Essex wrote. My Destiny Lies in the Bloody Death of Racists Pigs. Kill the racist pigs that give black people hell everyday. Thats what he did to a few. He sent a hand written declaration of War to the TV News Station in November of 1972. He warned them that many racist cops would die by his hands. Mark proved that he was an expert Marksman that was ready for War. Ironically, the first to feel Mark's bullets from over a 100 yards away was a black cadet in training at Central Lock Up. It happened on New Years Eve, 12-31-72 on a cold winter day. Then 5'4, Mark Essex killed another officer that night at the jailhouse, while fleeing to Gerttown, a sub division of New Orleans which is across the highway,separated by I-10, from the Jailhouse in question. On 1-7-73, He killed a white grocery store owner who appeared on the news and said he seen Mark run from the scene of the murders on New Years. Mark set the city on fire and took 9 lives, 5 N.O.P.D, 4 Hotel Guest, and severally wounded 13 others, all white except the one black cadet. When this 23 year old Black Sniper checked into the Howard Johnson, he never checked out. He took 9 to the here after and made the world remember his name. This is the ironic thing about Mark (Lil Jimmy) Essex that I learned from his family in Kansas. He grew up with liberal whites. He didn't experience hardly any racism. He had more white friends than he had black friends, and he had several white girlfriends in High School before he went to the NAVY. If he wasn't pushed into a survival state of mind, he wouldn't have checked into the Howard Johnson that day. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was in the process of making this documentary, Mark Essex when the flooding of Katrina claimed all of my possessions, robbing me of all my footage and equipment, so here I stand with this trailer. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Side Note: Shot out to Stanley Davis for directing and completing a film in the early 90's entitled MATA. I was hoping to enhance what he did in the film. Stanley Davis is also a producer on this project - Akeem the Dream http://mappingpoliceviolence.org/unarmed/

• published: 09 Oct 2016
• views: 812