Emma Pullen, 52; Documented Black History

Emma E. Pullen, a former journalist and filmmaker who spent more than two decades in Los Angeles documenting the history and culture of African Americans, has died. She was 52.

Pullen died of breast cancer July 20 at Duke Health Raleigh Hospital in Raleigh, N.C.

“She was a cultural wizard,” said James Burks, who founded the annual African Marketplace & Cultural Faire in Exposition Park, which Pullen co-directed last year. “Her diverse talent in the media benefited every project she worked on.”

After moving to Los Angeles to work at The Times in the 1970s, Pullen immersed herself in researching and preserving the black experience. She embarked on several oral history projects, including recording testimonials from those affected by the 1965 Watts riots.

“We are never interviewed as experts,” Pullen told The Times in 1993. “Our side isn’t in the history books.”

“Colors Straight Up,” a 1997 documentary that she helped produce, received an Academy Award nomination.

For television, she wrote “And the Children Shall Lead,” about racism in the South. The hourlong film aired in 1985 as part of the “Wonderworks” series on PBS.

Pullen also produced the short documentary “Marching Into the Millennium,” an overview of black Angeleno history, for the city’s Cultural Affairs Department.

Most recently, Pullen was a consultant to the William Grant Still Arts Center, which is devoted to African American art. She helped with such projects as the youth summer camp and the Pan African Film Festival, and spent more than a decade working on the African Marketplace.

Emma Eliza Pullen was born in Warren County, N.C., to Booker T. Pullen Sr. and Blanche Snow Pullen. She attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating with a bachelor’s in journalism in 1975.

She began her career as a reporter for the Washington Post and wrote for The Times in Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles before becoming an independent film writer and producer, and a publicist.

Pullen is survived by three sisters and a brother, all of North Carolina.