Eloyce Gist and the Hell-Bound Train

I and two other women will be presenting at this year's ASALH conference in Pittsburgh, PA on September 26th at 8:30AM on the topic of Black female filmmakers.

Eloyce Gist was a resident of Truxton Circle, which is why she showed up on my radar. On my blog, blog.inshaw.com I have nearly two decades of Truxton Circle (a Washington DC neighborhood) history in bits and parts. One of my blog series is the Black Homeowners of Truxton Circle, and Eloyce Gist was a Black homeowner in Truxton Circle. However, she was Mayme Eloyce King Patrick Gist Wood Slaughter.... she went through a couple of husbands and was James Gist's widow.

One of my co-panelists, JIllian Glantz will be covering early women filmmakers such as Madame E. Touissant Welcome and Zora Neale Hurston. I will follow with that of Eloyce Gist and Dr. Elizabeth Johnson will cover late 20th century filmmaker Kasi Lemmons.

The story of Eloyce Gist and the 1930 silent film Hell-bound Train is complicated. But it's complication was its saving grace. During the period she and her husband went around from church to church showing the Hell-bound Train film and its related shorts, Eloyce was near invisible. I did not see mention of her during James E. Gist Jr's lifetime, which ending in 1937. It was not until the Library of Congress received her films and began the super slow process of restoring the film fragments that were falling apart along their splices that her contributions became known.

So join me in Pittsburgh next month.

#ASALH2024 #ASALHPittsburgh