I remember how excited I was when I first saw this video by Dylan Nicholls. Dylan created it in 2014 as part of a successful Kickstarter campaign to help fund a film about the Shedrick Thompson case.

Dylan is a student at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Va., who works part time with Fauquier County filmmaker Tom Davenport. (I wrote about Tom in an earlier blog post.) Dylan’s mother, Shawn Nicholls, and his brother, Zach, also work with Tom. Together they are producing a documentary about Thompson’s lynching. They hope to complete it by the end of this year. My dream is that Tom and I will someday make joint appearances before school and civic groups, where I talk about The Last Lynching in Northern Virginia and Tom shows his film.

This 2-minute trailer was exciting because Dylan successfully pieced together excerpts from our filmed interviews and our research. It was evidence of how powerful the Thompson story is. And it was my first experience as an on-camera talking head.