Hortense Sie Beveridge

Hortense “Tee” Beveridge (1923-1993) was born on October 3, 1923, in New York City’s Harlem neighborhood. Beveridge’s father, Liberian–born Thorgues Sie, planted the seed of political activism in her with his instillation of appreciation for the family’s African heritage. Thorgues, one of a small number of Liberians living in New York in the 1920s and ’30s, opened the Sie household to serve as a meeting place for Liberian expatriates and other students from Africa. (https://cinemontage.org/cut-to-black-hortense-tee-beveridge-picture-editor/)

In 1947, Hortense “Tee” Beveridge was admitted to Hunter College. She majored in social work and became a mentee of the CNA (Committee for the Negro in the ARTS) which was the beginning of her film education. She then attended two semesters of night school film classes at New York University and made the acquaintance of fellow female film editor Peggy Lawson (with whom she would go on to collaborate over many years). Beveridge’s political activism in the late 1940s led her to join the Council on African Affairs (CAA)—an outgrowth of the International Committee on African Affairs, cofounded in 1937 by Max Yergan and Paul Robeson—where she merged her political activities with her nascent filmmaking skills. The CAA provided Beveridge with the opportunity to edit her first known complete film, South Africa Uncensored (1951), a twenty-two-minute polemic against apartheid that was distributed by the Council.