Barbara E. Allen Papers

Biographical Note

Barbara E. Allen directed, produced, edited, and wrote the 2005 Emmy-winning documentary, Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender. The film was hosted by Harry J. Lennix and featured such notables as Earl Calloway, Robert Sengstacke, and then Senator Barack Obama. It celebrates the centennial of the Chicago Defender and skillfully chronicles the pivotal role this groundbreaking newspaper played in African American life not only in Chicago but throughout the United States during the twentieth century. Beginning with the story of Robert Abbott, the Chicago Defender’s founder and editor, Paper Trail examines the paper’s tremendous influence on the Great Migration and the Civil Rights Movement – a period when its readership reached its height, the loss of readers beginning in the 1960s as the Civil Rights Movement grew more militant and the Defender held a conservative position on black politics and issues, and the paper’s present goal of regaining its position as the number one African American newspaper.

A graduate of Columbia College, Allen began her career as a film editor for WNBC-TV in New York. She later moved to NBC affiliate WMAQ-TV in Chicago and then to the Chicago Public Broadcasting Station, WTTW, as engineer/editor/producer. In addition to producing the three-time Emmy Award winning documentary, Paper Trail: 100 Years of the Chicago Defender, Allen has produced the critically acclaimed DuSable to Obama: Chicago’s Black Metropolis in 2010, Morning Due in 2007 (a film she not produced but directed; it was screened at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival, the Chicago International Film Festival, and won the Jury Prize for Best Film at the 2008 Langston Hughes Festival), and the 2006 Emmy nominated documentary, Standing on Common Ground: My Spring Break in New Orleans with her son Evan Allen Gessesse.

Allen also founded and serves as executive director of Middle Passage Productions, Inc., a non-profit media cooperative that promotes and produces multi-cultural programming. In this role, Allen has produced Urban Suite, a home-decorating for budget conscious city dwellers, and D-Tours, a cultural travel series highlighting the African Diaspora. In addition to these accomplishments, Allen has created and produced the Emmy nominated children’s program, TechKnow Kids, and co-produced and edited the award winning short film, 12 Minutes, and the cable award winning series, Inside Issues.