Melvin Van Peebles

CTL-E-5928 · Person · other · 1932–2021

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-07171 · provenance: build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-5928.

Melvin Van Peebles (born Melvin Peebles, August 21, 1932, Chicago; died September 21, 2021, New York City, aged 89) was the filmmaker, writer, composer, and actor whose independent feature Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971) opened the blaxploitation era and proved a Black-directed film could be financed outside the studio system and profit on its own terms. Raised in Chicago and educated at Ohio Wesleyan, he served in the Air Force, lived in the Netherlands and France, and made The Story of a Three-Day Pass (1967) from his French novel La Permission, winning an award at the San Francisco International Film Festival. A studio feature, Watermelon Man (1970), followed for Columbia. For Sweet Sweetback he wrote, directed, scored, and starred, raising roughly $150,000 independently; the film grossed just over $15 million. He also wrote the Broadway musical Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death (1971).

The record

• Also known as: Melvin Peebles

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 2 — 747 Program, Wave 9; second Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): no Melvin Van Peebles entity in the live graph at 3,603 entities (exact / normalized / alias + token containment); ID CTL-E-5928 free. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger, Tier 4 — Scan Tail Wave 1 packet ordered reserve, position 3 of 20 (corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked clean survivor #438). The scan supplied the NAME STRING ONLY; no fact in this record is sourced to it (CTL-GOV-004). SCOPE GATE: PASS — Chicago-born foundational figure of independent Black cinema; core scope. Vital status: DECEASED — died September 21, 2021, aged 89 (NPR obituary; Wikipedia). Tribute treatment in the Curator's Judgment. STATISTICS (sourced, dated): Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song (1971): independently raised budget of roughly $150,000 and box-office gross of just over $15 million (NPR obituary, 2021) — a hundred-fold return that demonstrated the commercial case for independent Black cinema. MEDIA: photo HELD (Melvin Van Peebles portrait from the Sweet Sweetback period, c. 1971 named as candidate; no file-page verification in this pass); chart FILLED (charts/chart-ctl-e-5928-melvin-van-peebles.svg); video HELD (no matching-entity CTL Short or verified-rights archival video staged); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Non-place record; no map attaches at the entity layer.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (CTL-created SVG (black / deep red / gold) built only from this record's sourced facts) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map catalog (checked by name and variants), and no official/em) | audio = HELD (No audiobook excerpt or author recording with a CTL rights basis was staged in this pass.)

Referenced by

• Mario Van Peebles — child of → this record

Sources

• Wikipedia, "Melvin Van Peebles" (accessed 2026-10-16) — Chicago birth August 21, 1932, death September 21, 2021, Ohio Wesleyan, the French period and Three-Day Pass, Watermelon Man, and the Sweet Sweetback production — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Van_Peebles (primary source · build store)
• NPR obituary, "Melvin Van Peebles, a giant of Black cinema, dies at 89" (September 22, 2021; NPR Illinois / WEKU mirror) — death at 89, Sweet Sweetback's roughly $150,000 independent budget and gross of just over $15 million, and his era-defining standing — https://www.weku.org/2021-09-23/melvin-van-peebles-a-giant-of-black-cinema-dies-at-89 (primary source · build store)

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Record CTL-E-5928 · Combined Graph record U-07171 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 2 sources · 1 mapped relationship.
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Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

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