Nate Long (1930-2002)

August 01, 2007 
/ Contributed By: Kathleen Fearn-Banks

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Nate Long

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Nate Long was a filmmaker, television producer, director, stuntman, actor and teacher who worked both in Hollywood and the Pacific Northwest. Long was born in Philadelphia in 1930.ย  He joined the Air Force, became a military policeman and completed his service at Paine Field near Everett, Washington in 1965. While in the Air Force he earned a black belt in judo.ย Long then taught judo and karate to inner-city children through Seattleโ€™s Central Area Motivation Project, his first post-military job.

Longโ€™s interest soon turned to mass media and in 1970 he created Oscar Productions, a Seattle-based photography, cinematography and television production training program for inner-city high school and college students.ย  For ten years, he and his students produced a weekly public affairs program, Action Inner City, and a monthly show titled Aggin News.ย  Both aired on KOMO-TV.ย  Former Seattle Mayor Norman Rice and former Fannie Mae Corporation CEO Franklin Raines were among his first students.

Long also produced two award-winning television series videotaped in the Pacific Northwest.ย  The first was South by Northwest, produced in 1974-75 and the sequel The Second Time Around aired in 1979.ย  Both series, funded by the U.S. government, chronicled the lives of African American settlers in the Pacific Northwest and was funded by the federal government.ย  South by Northwest was one of the first productions to use videotape to record exterior scenes.

The series aired on PBS and more than 80 commercial stations nationwide in 1975.ย  It earned the Corporation for Public Broadcasting Award (CBEA) in 1975 and the New York Film Festival Award in 1976.ย  The series also starred nationally recognized African-American actors Esther Rolle, Denise Nicholas, Rosalind Cash, Bernie Casey, Vonetta McGee, and John Amos, among others.

While working on the Pacific Northwest documentaries, Long also developed a career in Hollywood.ย  By the early 1970s he became one of the early African American second unit (assistant) directors in the motion picture industry.ย  His second unit director credits included The Slams (1973), Mr. Billion (aka The Windfall) (1977) and Over the Edge (1979).ย  In 1982 he worked on the feature film Tex, thus becoming the first African American selected to be second unit director for a Walt Disney film.

Long performed stunts in Tex, Mr. Billion, and The Slams, as well as Hit Man (1972), Truck Turner (1974), and White Line Fever (1975). He was stunt coordinator for Tex and White Line Fever. Nate Long was a member of the Directors Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, the Association of Black Motion Picture and Television Producers, and the Alliance of Black Entertainment Technicians.

In 1985, Long returned to the Pacific Northwest where he designed and implemented the first two-year film program at Seattle Central Community College.ย  He directed the program until 1995.ย  Long later established and managed similar media programs at Texas Southern University and Texas A&M University.

Nate Long died of leukemia in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Los Angeles on November 14, 2002.

About the Author

Author Profile

Kathleen Fearn-Banks, a tenured associate professor, joined the faculty of the School of Communications, University of Washington (Seattle) in 1990 after more than 25 years in the communications profession. In addition to being a feature writer at the Los Angeles Times and a news-writer, producer, and reporter for a Los Angeles network affiliated television station, she also headed, for more than 20 years, nationwide publicity campaigns for NBC Television Network series, specials, and movies. She was also vice-president of development and public relations for the Neighbors of Watts, an entertainment industry non-profit which raised funds for daycare centers in underprivileged areas of Los Angeles.

In addition to her work in academia, Fearn-Banks counsels companies and organizations on crisis prevention, crisis communications, and helps them develop crisis communications plans.

She is author of Crisis Communications: A Casebook Approach published first in 1996 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. with a second edition in 2002 and a third edition in 2007. The book is popular as a business as well as a university text and is used in more than 50 colleges and universities.

In 2006, Scarecrow Press, Inc. published The Historical Dictionary of African- American Television which she wrote based on research and her many years of experiences in network television in Southern California. She is co-editor, with Anthony Chan, of People to People: An Introduction to Mass Communications published in 1997 by American Heritage Publishing, a division of Forbes, Inc. She wrote chapters for two books in recent years: โ€œCrisis Communications: A Review of Some of the Best Practicesโ€ in Handbook of Public Relations, edited by Robert Heath and Gabriel Vasquez for Sage Publishing, 2000, and โ€œThe Crisis Communications Plan,โ€ in Profolio:Crisis Management and Planning, PRSA Professional Practices Center, 1998. She has entries in the Encyclopedia of Public Relations (2005) from Sage Publishing. She has written numerous articles in journals, magazines, and newspapers.

In 1999, she was elected โ€œPR Professional of the Yearโ€ by the Seattle branch of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA). In the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC), she was elected by national vote to the Professional Freedom and Responsibility Committee and served as its chair. Also in AEJMC, she won the prestigious Baskett Mosse Award for research and faculty development in 1995. At the University of Washington, she developed a public relations sequence, created six courses, founded a chapter of PRSSA.

She earned a B.A. in journalism from Wayne State University, an M.S. in journalism from UCLA, and completed the coursework for a doctorate in instructional technology from the University of Southern California. She is a member of the advisory board of the UW Extension Divisionโ€™s Certificate Program in Public Relations. In Seattle, she has been a member of several non-profit boards. At UW, she is a member of the Faculty Council on Student Affairs. She is also a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, and Delta Sigma Theta (an international public service organization of African-American women).

CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:

Fearn-Banks, K. (2007, August 01). Nate Long (1930-2002). BlackPast.org. https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/long-nate-1930-2002/

Source of the Author's Information:

“‘He Was a Mover and a Shaker’ in Seattle Film and TV Business,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Saturday, November 23, 2002; “Nate Long,” Internet Movie Database (IMDb), retrieved April 17, 2007 from <http://imdb.com/.

Further Reading