Foster Dickson's Blog, page 26

“Sketches of Newtown”

The closures and quarantines associated with COVID-19 put a damper on thousands of events and projects in 2020, including our proposed work last spring that would have expanded the scope of the oral history collection that my students did in Montgomery’s Newtown community in 2019. But we’re not going to let this bad ol’ pandemic stop us.

[image error]The Sketches of Newtown project, which is funded by a (follow-up) education grant from the Alabama Bicentennial Commission, will expand on the work done in the original Bicentennial-funded oral history project, carrying forward these writing students’ involvement in collecting and examining our local history. The small monograph of “sketches” will begin with Newtown’s stated founding date of 1836, a year situated between the city’s founding in 1817 and the Civil War in the 1860s, and end with an examination of what the future might hold for the community. Chapters will look at such subjects as nearby Cypress Nature Park, the Hale School (formerly Cemetery Hill School), and the longstanding Newtown Reunion.

Of course, the writers are high school students, who are working almost totally from home, while they do their other schoolwork, so we’re not writing a definitive history of the Newtown community. This won’t be scholarly tome or an end-all be-all. What the project is, though, is an effort to connect students to a subject within their local community, to ask, what is this place? what has happened here? who are the people who’ve lived here? My class is not a history class, it’s Creative Writing, so our goal with both the 2019 oral history project and this current project is not so much to find and report the facts of the place, but seek out then share the humanity in the place, and in that sharing, learn something about what it means to be writers.

[image error]The entire time I’ve taught, I’ve conducted projects like this, because I believe in the value of experiential learning and in the value of community engagement. In 2004, my second year in the classroom, I applied for and received a Teaching Tolerance grant from the Southern Poverty Law Center to conduct a project (similar to this one) about the Civil Rights movement, because I wanted to connect my students to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and Selma-to-Montgomery March during the important anniversary year 2005. That little book of reflective essays was titled Taking the Time: Young Writers and Old Stories. Since then, I’ve organized other one-time projects, like a student-written publication about our state constitution titled More than a Century Later, as well as ongoing projects, like traveling to Northport’s Kentuck Festival of the Arts for students to interview artists or visiting Montgomery’s historic Oakwood Cemetery to choose a subject for genealogical research.

For years, I’ve also been teaching from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well, and every year, I put particular emphasis on this passage: “Go with what seems inevitable in your own heritage. Embrace it and it may lead you to eloquence.” In a time where education is so standardized, the teaching of local history and appreciation of local folkways is sorely underrepresented in how we as communities raise our children. Our schools may be teaching math and reading, but we’re failing to teach them to value the culture that surrounds them. It’s no wonder that so many young people won’t detach from screens— why should they? Few people point out what’s in their immediate vicinity as worthy of attention. I can’t do anything about that sentiment for millions of teenagers all over the nation, but I can do something for the couple-dozen that I teach. And that’s what this project and others like it are about. One of my other favorite quotes comes from an avant-garde artist named Guy Debord, who wrote, “It is not a question of knowing whether this interests you but rather whether you yourself could become more interesting under new conditions of cultural creation.” All I’m saying is: let’s put down the phones and look at something close to home for a bit. If they’ll do that, they’ll see why I wanted them to.

The work of producing Sketches of Newtown has already begun and will take place over the next month, with plans for a second oral-history event to be held in 2021, if COVID allows. Once the writing, editing, layout, and design are complete, the books should be available in early 2021 and will be distributed free of charge. There will also be a photographic component to the project, undertaken by our school’s Photography students.

 

Watching: “Other Music” and “The Booksellers”

I love music, and I love books. I can’t get enough of either, and I’m also pretty opinionated about both. Which is why I recently watched the two documentaries Other Music and The Booksellers, both released this year. I actually started watching Other Music because I thought it would be about CBGB, the club in New York’s Bowery whose name also includes the acronym “OMFUG,” which stands for “Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers.” But it wasn’t. It was about a great independent record store that shut down in this digital age of streaming. 

The other documentary I had heard about because it was supposed to show at The Capri, our local independent movie theatre, the week the pandemic shut everything down. I’ve written before and complain regularly about how there’s too little programming (films, TV shows) about books, literature, and especially poetry, and was glad to see this 99-minute homage to those who love books even more – much more! – than I do. 

I don’t know why but the term “material culture” has been coming up a lot lately in conversations that I’ve either been in or been privy to. Maybe the pandemic has had us all at home staring at all the stuff we own, causing us to wonder why we own it. Maybe I just hang out with people who like to let the latest intellectual jargon drip off their lips. Either way, these two were good movies about material culture, welcome discoveries in the endless “Watch Next” scroll.

 

A Southern Movie Bonus: Another Spooky, Scary Southern Sampler, Old School Edition

In October, everybody loves horror movies. Even people who don’t like horror movies. All of the movies listed below are set in the South, are available on streaming services, and can satisfy a Halloween-time craving for a spooky, scary movie. This time, we’ve got five that are a little older, from the late ’60s to the early ’80s.

The Witchmaker (1969)

Set in the bayous of Louisiana, follows the Satanic exploits of Luther the Berserk. With plenty of late ’60s kitsch and more than its share of maniacal laughing, this film is basically an exploitation film with all of the ingredients: scantily clad women, a creepy back story told by a local yokel, cheap special effects, city folks dropped off in the backwoods.

Though this might have a decent drive-in movie feature for a couple of teenagers on a double date, The Witchmaker wasn’t nominated for any Academy Awards.

Moon of the Wolf (1972)

This made-for-TV movie, set in a small Southern town, centers on the murder of a young woman, who looks like she has been attacked by dogs. But no wild dogs are in the area. As the town’s manly-man sheriff investigates the killing, he is also trying to build a love affair with a pretty, middle-aged, blue-blood who has just returned to town. Meanwhile, he is also being harried by the dead woman’s redneck brother, who wants justice, and to complicate matters, the dead woman was pregnant with the local doctor’s baby!

Also very dated, this general-audiences horror flick offers an option for viewers who don’t have the stomach for more gruesome films. Truthfully, it’s barely a horror film at all, but since the last half-hour or so leans that way, I’ve added it to the sampler for good measure.

The Town That Dreaded Sundown (1976)

Made by Charles B. Pierce of Boggy Creek fame, 1976’s The Town that Dreaded Sundown is another docudrama about a frightening local mystery that came and went but was never solved. Like The Legend of Boggy Creek, this film is also low-budget and set in Arkansas, but unlike its predecessor, the story here is structured reasonably well. However, the charm that was achieved by that 1972 cult classic did not reemerge in this one four years later.

Set in Texarkana, Arkansas in 1946, The Town that Dreaded Sundown is based on the true story of what are called The Texarkana Moonlight Murders, which occurred in two adjacent counties: Miller County, Arkansas, and Bowie County, Texas.  At the time of the movie’s release, The Philadelphia Inquirer derided the movie as “indigestible,” yet the reviewer for Greenville, Mississippi’s Delta Times-Democrat called it a “powerful undertaking into physical and real world blunt mutilation, and man’s capability of destroying his fellow man.”

Eaten Alive (1976)

Being blunt, Eaten Alive – originally titled “Starlight Slaughter” – may be the worst movie ever. Made by Tobe Hooper, who two years earlier had given the world the now-notorious Texas Chainsaw Massacre, this grindhouse film gathers the same boisterous bad acting, cheap special effects, and off-kilter storytelling into all of the gory glory that one might expect, this time setting its weird narrative in a backroads Southern hotel where the proprietor has a scythe and a giant alligator.

As bad as it is, the movie is based on the true story of a serial killer named Joe Ball, who was dubbed the “alligator man.” Ball lived in tiny Elmendorf, Texas (near San Antonio) and committed suicide in 1938 after police were tipped off that he killed women and fed them to his alligators. I don’t really get the appeal of grindhouse movies, but I can say that there is nothing particularly (or realistically) Southern about Eaten Alive, even though its characters and setting are supposed to be. You could pick up the story and move it elsewhere, and it would be a cheap flick in the spirit of Psycho or slightly less surreal version of Motel Hell.

Dark Night of the Scarecrow (1981)

This made-for-TV movie is billed as being set in the Deep South but the locale looks more like rural California. The story is centered on the wrongful lynching of a mentally challenged man named Bubba who is falsely accused to hurting a little girl. (The truth is that a dog attacks her and Bubba saves her and brings her body home.) Led by the town’s ill-tempered mail man, the cadre of yokels find Bubba where he has disguised himself as a scarecrow and riddle him with bullets and buck shot, before the call comes in that Bubba had actually saved the girl. Of course, the lynch mob is acquitted by the courts, but vengeance will come in another form.

As horror movies go, Dark Night of the Scarecrow is pretty light, considering it was made in the early ’80s to show on television. Much of the suspense is built on creepy music and slow pacing, but we get what we expect from a 1980s flick: the mean guys, who bully everyone, get what’s coming to them.

See the previous Spooky, Scary Southern Sampler from October 2019

Call for Submissions for “Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore”

[image error]Though the website has been up since the summer, today officially begins my Literary Arts Fellowship so it seems to follow that today is also the official start to my newest project Nobody’s Home: Modern Southern Folklore. The idea for the project came to me in recent years, though the experiences that led to the idea have come over the last twenty. Having grown up a white, working-class kid in the Deep South in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, then having worked on Civil Rights history and commemoration projects as an adult in the 2000s and ’10s has given me a firsthand look at how the beliefs, myths, and narratives about race relations, history, and the Civil Rights movement have changed. As mainstream views about neglected voices have become more open, the work that I began twenty years ago – asking what stories aren’t being told and trying to share them – has been adopted en masse by scholars, institutions, museums, and even in popular political movements. 

That mass interest is what prompts me to ask: what are the beliefs, myths, and narratives that have driven Southern culture over the last fifty years? I can’t answer that alone, and in any of my work, I’ve never tried to. As a long-time fan and almost-disciple of the late William Zinsser, what I know about writing on real-life subjects is: “His [or her or their] own words will always be better than your words, even if you are the most elegant stylist in the land.” And there is no better medium or format for that sharing of voices than the anthology. The term itself comes from the Latin and means “flower-gathering,” literally— anthos being flower, and logia being collection. Nobody’s Home is an online anthology, not a literary journal and not a blog. Instead of new issues, works, or posts replacing old ones in the featured spot, each new work will stand alongside the others.

The project will accept only works of nonfiction – no poetry, fiction, or drama – which could include memoirs, personal essays, articles, opinion pieces, and contemplative works, as well as interviews and reviews. The goal is to reach general audiences with the ideas presented in the works, so this won’t be the right place for highly academic approaches to the subject. The works in Nobody’s Home should bring an aspect of this difficult question down to earth. In line with that goal of reaching a broad audience with important ideas, access to the anthology will be free, so no reader will have to choose whether to pay or do without. I’ve read that 70% of online sales are abandoned at the “cart,” and I don’t want money (or one’s attitude about it) to be an impediment. 

In addition to the works that will later appear in the anthology, I will be writing an editor’s blog for the project. Called “Groundwork,” the blog will contain project updates, brief ruminations,  excerpts from interviews, periodic travelogues, and other peripheral bits of interest. 

If you’re interested in contributing to the anthology, I would suggest reading my first two editor’s blog posts: “Myths and the truths we live by,” and “A Word from the Editor about Submissions.” Those two pieces augment the explanation provided in the submission guidelines.

To hear Foster talk about Nobody’s Home, as well as other projects, with the Alabama Writers Cooperative’s Alina Stefansecu, watch the video below:

Reading: “Woodrow’s Trumpet”

Woodrow’s Trumpet by Tim McLaurin
My rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

[image error]Woodrow’s Trumpet was one of those novels that got some attention at the time – it was published in hardcover by Norton in 1989 – but which has kind of disappeared since. Its author Tim McLaurin, who passed away in 2002, was one of those mid-list Southern writers whose eclectic array of life experiences created a body of work that defies typical notions of Southern-ness. And that’s exactly what drew me to this book: descriptions calling it a work of the New South.

Set in a small farming community outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, the novel centers on the overly large and deceptively simpleminded Vietnam veteran Woodrow Bunce, whose landed-gentry family expects to keep up both wealth and appearances. Rounding out the main players are Ellis, an angry, orphaned teenager who Woodrow employs part-time, and Nadean, a black woman who returns to town after going astray in Washington DC and becoming a heroin junkie. The town goes nuts when Woodrow has Nadean shacking up with him, then the suburbanites who’ve infested a former plot of Bunce farmland nearby go even more nuts when Woodrow builds her a beachy paradise on their front lawn. The antagonist is Mary, a “Karen” from up North whose overzealous liberalism and amateurish penchant for public policy put her at odds with Woodrow and Nadean, as she tries to sure up the bedroom-community appeal of her very new homeplace. Sprinkled in are the pot-growing Lupo family, who oppose any new development, and the old-money Bunces, who are alternately embarrassed by Woodrow and plagued with troubles of their own. The novel’s story pits small-town ideals against modern progress, bringing together a variety of Southern types.

Woodrow’s Trumpet is not a great novel, but it is quite good. McLaurin weaves back and forth among the characters and their backstories, jumping among time periods and revealing just enough to maintain a little mystery. The narrative is built on people who are interesting and quirky but not so odd as to turn the novel into a cheap imitation of A Confederacy of Dunces. Appearing to be out-of-print at the point, used copies are available for folks who’d like to dive into a Gen-X era Southern novel that’s funny in spots but serious in general, not too deep but definitely not shallow either.

 

Southern Movie 51: “Murder in Mississippi” (1965)

Dogmatic, cheaply produced, and poorly acted, 1965’s Murder in Mississippi appears to be an attempt to rush out a pro-Civil Rights film at the height of the violence in the Deep South. Released the year after the 1964 murders of Goodman, Chaney, and Schwerner, and directed by Joseph P. Mawra, the film follows a carload of Civil Rights workers who head south to help with voter registration. 

The opening scenes of Murder in Mississippi are mixed with joviality and tension. A group of young people ride down the highway in a convertible. There are five of them in all: two black men, one black woman, one white man (who we will find out is Jewish), and one white woman. They are all clean cut, nice-looking, and appear to be in their late teens or early twenties. As lively but frenetic music plays, the car rolls along with one of the black men driving and the one white woman in the passenger seat. Titling shows us the names of states they are passing through, and we know they are going south. As these first few moments go by, the credits roll, and they are pulled over by a police officer. Of course, despite their playful energy during the ride, the movie is titled Murder in Mississippi, and they’re an interracial group heading south, so we know that whatever happens won’t be good.

With the credits passed and the convertible back on the road, our attention is shifted to the sheriff’s office. The scene begins with a chubbyguy playing a nylon strong guitar and singing, for no apparent reason, then Deputy Bob comes in quickly and reports to Sheriff Engstrom what he has just seen. The sheriff says, “Better bring ’em in,” to which the deputy replies, “On what charge?” His answer is: “Any damn charge,” then he rattles off a list of possible options. The deputy knows what to do, and as he is leaving, the sheriff stops him and says that he ought to get Phil and Andy Loving to help him. After Bob is gone, the sheriff leans back in his chair and appears deep in thought.

Nearby, at a ratty-looking building, we see our young Civil Rights workers get their orientation. The man speaking to them, Paul, is handsome and muscular and very serious. He tells them that efforts to register black voters have so far been unsuccessful, for two reasons: the registration office moves both its location and its hours at random, and any new voter must be vouched-for by a registered voter. The pretty young white woman who has just arrived, Carol Byrd, muses, “I’d hated to be the first white person to vouch for a Negro voter.” The leader agrees and reminds them once again that it “will be no picnic.” They must reply with “sir” even to angry whites who spit on them, because they have one aim – to register black voters – and maybe, just maybe, a few local blacks will realize that they really do have some rights. The newbies get up and shuffle off, and the scene ends with the young black woman Sally telling Paul that they’ll be alright.

But really they won’t be. In the next scene, a police car pulls the convertible over, with only Carol in it. Though we don’t hear the exchange, she shows her driver’s license then motions back down the road in reply to the questions. We know that she pointing out where the Civil Rights workers’ office is. 

Next we see, the whole carload of them is being pulled into the sheriff’s office by the deputy and two other men, presumably the Phil and Andy mentioned earlier. As the five outsiders are lined up, the black man who was driving earlier tries to sit but is admonished to stand up. Once the five are told to sit, one of the white men takes the chair from the one who tried to sit, making him sit on the floor instead. The sheriff then comes over and  asks where they’re from. Philadelphia . . . New York . . . then Carol says, “Virginia.” The sheriff responds, “Ooh, a real Southern belle!” but he is not impressed, and tells the group that he can’t let them just walk into town, take over, start riots, and cause problems. He explains that his is a good, peaceful, Baptist community, and it will stay that way. One of the swarthy-looking men says he wants to quit wasting time and run them out, but the sheriff says that he’ll give them a chance to leave on their own.

As the others leave, Sheriff Engstrom, Phil, and Andy hold back the young black man Luther, who was driving the convertible earlier and tried to sit before being told that he could. They sit him down and surround him, making threatening insinuations, but Luther says that he will stay, that he has a job to do. So, Phil and Andy beat him up.

Back the Civil Rights office, Luther is bloody and being consoled by his friends. He says that he is OK, but Carol is appalled that this has happened. Tyrone, the other young black man who rode down in the convertible, says that he should have helped, but Luther reminds him that he was too scared. Tyrone objects to the characterization, then Paul steps in to warn Luther about being too strong-willed. He calls the small group over to the map and assigns them places to canvas. 

They don’t last long, and Phil and Andy are hauling three of them back into Sheriff Engstrom’s office again. This time, Engstrom takes out a clipboard and begins taking down their names and other information. We find out that Tyrone goes to Temple University in Philadelphia and that the young Jewish man Bernie goes to City College of New York. Carol, on the other hand, is a Virginia blue blood, the daughter of a judge in Richmond and the niece of the state attorney, and she breaks into a rant about being tired of apologizing for the bigotry of the South!

This really angers Sheriff Engstrom, who says never to apologize for him, then he proceeds to have Bob type up a confession for Bernie to sign, saying that Bernie admits to stealing a typewriter from a local stationary store. Bernie objects that the town doesn’t even have a stationary store, but the sheriff is undeterred. He then tells Bob to type up another confession for Tyrone, saying that he has been sharing a bed with Carol. These are the final incitements to leave town and can be rendered null and void if they clear out.

But Tyrone won’t sign. So Sheriff Engstrom begins to beat him, which leads Bernie to intervene, which leads Bob to jump up and pull his gun, which leads Bernie and Bob to struggle, which leads Bob to shoot Bernie dead! Carol flies out of her chair to him, but Bernie is already gone, and Tyrone shouts, “I hate it here! I wish all you white bastards where dead!” Carol objects to this affront against all white people, shouting back, “Bernie died for you!” But Tyrone is hearing none of it. Full of fear and anger, Tyrone proclaims that Carol is just like these bigots in Mississippi who regard all blacks in the negative same way. Carol disagrees, but Tyrone is unhinged and tries to fight his way out of the room. Yet, there are too many of them, and the four racists overtake Tyrone and choke the life out of him.

[image error]Though the term won’t become popular for decades, we see Carole as the embodiment of white privilege. Unlike Tyrone or Luther, or even Bernie, she has her whiteness on her side— and she knows it. After everyone leaves the sheriff’s office, Phil and Andy take Carole out in the woods, most likely to rape and kill her and to bury the other bodies. As they drag her through the woods, she struggle a bit then breaks into a diatribe about how they may have killed her friends, but they’ll be hanged for sure if they kill her, a white woman. Do you know I am, she asks, and reminds them that she is the daughter of a judge and the sister of movie star Dick Byrd.

When they seem swayed by the anecdote about her brother, Carol eggs it on, promising that he’ll bring them each $5,000 if they help her escape. Phil and Andy then weigh the options and decide that $10,000 would get them a long way from Mississippi, where Engstrom couldn’t touch them. The deal sounds good, so the trio goes to a phone booth and calls her brother. He is to bring $10,0000 and meet them in room 3B of a local motel.

Back at the Civil Rights workers’ meeting place, Sally is pacing around while Luther and another young black man clean up the space. As Sally begins to make a phone call, Sheriff Engstrom and Deputy Bob show up. The sheriff first asks the new character who he is, and he replies, “Carl Montgomery, sir” in a mousy little voice. With no provocation at all, the two lawmen arrest mousy Carl, and Luther asks forcefully, “On what charge?” The sheriff tells Luther that he needed to stay up North and that he can only find out the charge if he’s in a jail cell, too. Luther stares coldly, and the sheriff leaves. Sally watches the whole scene from behind the podium. Luther tells her to call Murray, the head man from up North, to get the FBI, then he tells her, “I’m not going to sit around on my butt.”

When Dick Byrd, Carole’s brother, arrives, he is surprisingly not agitated at all. Smooth and smirking, Dick checks into his little motel, which apparently has room service, and orders bottle, a rare sirloin, and the skins of two baked potatoes. 

Across town though, Paul is very agitated and sweating profusely. He is in a small bedroom, presumably hiding from Engstrom, and talking to Sally, who reports what’s going on. Paul remarks that he has done it again, lost three more Civil Rights workers. Sally then tries to soothe him, first lighting him a fresh cigarette then turning off the light so they can smooch and whatever else.

In yet another location, Carole is being held in a trash-strewn, cobweb-covered shack. The scene begins with Andy telling his brother Phil that he won’t stand aside while Phil rapes her. Then leave, Phil tells him, reaching over and ripping off Carole’s shirt. The two brothers then bicker over who will go meet Dick, and Andy gets the job. Phil reminds him not to get any funny ideas with the money, and as soon as he leaves, Phil forces himself on Carole.

By now, there’s a lot going on in Murder in Mississippi, so our attention is shifted again. Luther is out on the dirt road with his clipboard, trying to talk people into voting. But he gets turned away over and over. Meanwhile, Sally is seen leaving the little shack where Paul is hiding, carrying a briefcase, and we see her working hard as well to get some black folks registered. Sally spends some time with a lady named Mrs. Moore on the porch of a ramshackle house training the woman how to answer the questions that registrars will ask.

Just as we see the Civil Rights workers out doing good in the community, Phil is back at the shack trying coax Carole into sex by offering the hungry, half-naked woman a bite of his greasy chicken. Carole is ruffled and pleading for food, but Phil says, “Naw, you ain’t hungry enough yet.” 

Back at his motel, Dick gets a visit from Sally, who reminds him that she is friends with Carole. Dick is on the phone with the mayor because the kidnappers haven’t shown up yet, when she knocks on the door. After Dick reminisces for a moment about his work in the theater, Sally tells him that, like him, she doesn’t know where Carole is. Dick says not to worry since the sheriff is coming over, and just as Sally begins to lament, Engstrom shows up. He sees Sally and murmurs a remark about her still being around, then she leaves. He talks to Dick, who asks how long this ransom business will take; he has an important part he is rehearsing. (Keep in mind, this is a guy whose sister has been kidnapped.) The two men go back and forth about the kidnapping, and Engstrom says that it’s best to leave it to him to handle.

Out on the road, Luther is still going door to door. He stops at a house where he has a heavily scripted dialogue with a shirtless, middle-aged farmer named Mr. Taylor, while his wife and child listen nearby. The farmer is wary, reminding Luther that they all have to live there after people like him leave. Luther remains obstinate in the face of the man who claims that the Civil Rights workers “make trouble for us.” After a few moments, Luther’s tenacity has angered Taylor, and he calls his wife and child into the house, putting Luther back out on the road.

Back again at the motel, Dick is visited by pretty, young black woman. He answers the door, and she says, “Sheriff told me to come up here and take care of you.” Dick responds, “Well, Southern hospitality.”  She quickly takes off her clothes and climbs into bed with him, as Dick is made to understand she does as the sheriff tells her. As they roll into the covers, Andy comes in through the hallway window to talk about the ransom. Dick has to get out of bed, and he casually hands Andy $10,000 in cash then asks about Carole. Andy says that she’ll be at the corner of Highway 1 and Route 41 at 6:00 the next morning. Dick plays it cool, points his finger, and says she’d better be. (Dick is obviously a complete idiot.)

Now, it’s time for some turnabout-is-fair-play. Luther has left the dirt road and is wandering in woods, when he stumbles on the shack where Carole is being held. Inside, she is gnawing on the remnants of the chicken, and a shirtless, sweaty Phil decides its time to make his move. But Carole bites his lip, drawing blood— and about that time, Luther arrives! He loses it like Tyrone did earlier and attacks Phil, calling him, “Animal! Animal!” At first Phil is getting the best of Luther, but Luther comes back and chokes Phil out.

Next we see, Phil is being smacked awake by Sheriff Engstrom who has obviously figured out the ransom scheme. But Carole and Luther are gone! They are running for their lives through the woods, while the bigots and their dogs searching diligently. This goes on for a few moments with excitable music playing, until Carole and Luther are exhausted. In something of a tender moment, Luther offers his white button-down to Carole , whose dress has been ripped open, and she accepts the kind gesture. She lays her head in his lap, and they kiss. However, they are discovered mid-embrace, and in a particularly disturbing scene, Luther is overtaken, held down, and castrated as he screams wildly. 

At the sheriff’s office afterward, there is a straight-laced FBI agent questioning first the sheriff then Carole. He is investigating the disappearance of Tyrone and Bernie, and doesn’t appear phased by the fact that Carole is dirty, wearing tattered clothes, and obvious distraught. The sheriff claims that she was raped by Luther. All the FBI man can do is say that isn’t over yet and leave. After he is gone, Dick sits slyly on the sheriff’s desk and makes a deal with Engstrom to have Carole testify in a way that will exonerate the Mississippi bigots and clear her of all charges.

In the movie’s last ten minutes, we find the whole gang appearing before the United States Commission. Bernie’s father comes in and speaks to Carole, asking where Bernie is, but Carole says that she doesn’t know. The commissioner (judge) is a woman who is very Southern, very rude, and very unfriendly to the cause of Civil Rights. She argues with every word the prosecutor says, then he calls Carole to testify. But going against the plan, Carole immediately begins to shout the truth: Engstrom killed Tyrone and Bernie and castrated Luther. However, the recalcitrant judge will not hear any of it, claiming that there is no evidence and that the law doesn’t cover what the prosecutor is alleging. It is clear to us viewers: the legal system in Mississippi is blind to justice. The bigots love it, and they cheer for the judge’s ludicrous ruling! Even Dick congratulates the sheriff, who tells Carole that he will forgive her for all of the lies she has told.

However, a befuddled Carole resists. Dick tries to take her home, but she wrinkles her brow and proclaims that she has now become fully involved. She will not return with Dick. She will stay in Mississippi after seeing what happened to Bernie, Tyrone, and Luther. Her brother can’t believe it, but she tells him, “Either you’re on his side, or ours.” Dick then asks Engstrom how he expects to win this battle over Civil Rights, and Engstrom replies, “You don’t win, you just hang on as long as you can.”

As he is saying this, Deputy Bob appears with an order from the mayor to sign a petition that allows a new group of Civil Rights activists to have a parade. Engstrom won’t sign it, but Deputy Bob says that “the big man” says he has to. Now, out of the blue, a turncoat Dick begins to have a laugh at the sheriff’s predicament, mocking the “dirty politics” of it all. Engstrom signs the document, and Deputy Bob asks him what he’s doing. Engstrom replies, “Hangin’ on.”

The film ends with scenes from the movement, including footage of Lyndon B. Johnson and the March on Washington. 

If you look on IMDb at the personal quotes attributed to director Joseph P. Mawra, you’ll find this: “We never set out to make anything that would be remembered— it was just about getting quick product into the theaters.” After watching Murder in Mississippi, I believe it. Looking up reviews and information on the film yields almost nothing, a fact that is underpinned by the Norman Rockwell painting on the same name and year and by the fact most search results bring up actual murders in Mississippi. 

While I understand the necessity of creating films that comment on social justice issues, I can’t understand this one, which couldn’t have contributed anything to the national dialogue in 1965. Its characters are mostly stereotypes, its plot is predictable, the dialogue is cardboard, the acting is terrible, all the things.

To me, the most compelling aspects of this film about the South are the troubling actions of Carole Byrd and her brother Dick. Neither Sheriff Engstrom, Deputy Bob, Phil nor Andy are surprising in any way. Frankly, neither are most of the Civil Rights workers. But knowing what we do about the rigor with which Civil Rights organizations vetted and trained volunteers – especially white volunteers – for service in the South, Carole’s entitled, privileged, half-baked noblesse oblige and her completely undisciplined approach to her work are impossible to buy into. Moreover, her brother Dick comes to Mississippi, after having been raised in the South, with an extremely flippant, la-tee-dah attitude about two rednecks who’ve kidnapped his sister. Moreover, when he is approached, unsolicited, by a young black prostitute who tells him that the sheriff basically has her bound to involuntary servitude, he has a la-tee-dah attitude about taking her bed, too. Perhaps Carole is the film’s changed character, when she faces the truth in the end, while Dick essentially sides with the bigoted sheriff and the two men who kidnapped his sister. If that’s the case, if our focus is on Carole’s growth from a naive do-gooder to real believer, then once again, we have a problematic film that focuses not on the brutality leveled on black Southerners but on yet another white conversion narrative. (I’ve written about this before in posts about The Klansman and The Liberation of LB Jones.)

Murder in Mississippi may be a throwaway film, but it goes without saying that somebody who didn’t know any better saw it and bought into what they saw. Sure, there are some grains of truth here – stereotypes don’t come from nowhere – but the devil is in the details. I just hope that whoever saw this film and was inspired (or disgusted ) by it— I just hope they took the time to look closer into what the facts were.

See more Southern Movie posts

Reading: “Black Elk Speaks”

Black Elk Speaks: Being the Life Story of a Holy Man of the Oglala Sioux
by John G. Neihardt
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

[image error]The road that led me to Black Elk Speaks was a circuitous one. Though I’m not indifferent to it, I’m not particularly interested in Native American history, nor in the history of American West, and this book is both. My introduction to Black Elk came instead through reading Sonny Brewer’s novel The Poet of Tolstoy Park, which tells the story of Henry Stuart, an Idaho college professor who retired to convalesce in Fairhope, Alabama in the 1920s. Stuart, who was a real person, was a devotee of Leo Tolstoy and, after hearing Black Elk speak, was influenced by the Oglala Sioux holy man as well. I enjoyed Brewer’s novel when I read it back in 2005, and it has always been my habit to look into things that people I like also like (as in discovering Charlie Parker’s music through reading Jack Kerouac.)

However, this book stayed on my reading list for about more than a decade before I bought a copy. As a collector of oral histories myself, I’m a fan of the genre, and that’s basically what Black Elk Speaks is: a book-length oral history told by a very elderly Native American and collected in the 1930s by a white poet. The narrative begins when Black Elk is nine, in the early 1870s; he has a religious vision that sets the trajectory for his life. The reader is then carried through the turbulent period when white Americans – who he calls wasichus – are settling/conquering/usurping the West. In his story, Black Elk relays with candor the love he has for his people and for a way of life that he saw disappear in the late 1800s, while remarking with equal candor about the violence it took to hold off the white soldiers who were enforcing unjust treaties made with a few tribal leaders who lacked the authority to make deals on behalf of all indigenous people who occupied those lands. The latter portions of the book also discuss his time traveling in Europe with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and finally his settling-down into an undesirable way of life forced on him by the American government.  As a person largely ignorant to the specifics of this history, I’m thankful to have read a firsthand narrative from a person who both lived it and stood up bravely against it.

Although Black Elk was an Oglala Sioux, his story is one of many like it in American history. As Americans, we regularly insist on our own rights and freedoms, while simultaneously opposing others who stand up for their rights and freedoms. In Black Elk Speaks, one of US military’s first moves was to build a roadway through the land for wagons and carriages, but his people knew that would both disturb the bison and lead to more intrusions. Likewise, because all indigenous people hadn’t agreed the treaties, each side had to kill or be killed in battles that decided the very American question, whose rights win out when both parties can’t have their way? 

In historical retrospect, we know that Native Americans were mistreated – in Black Elk’s words, you can’t eat lies – but now, in the fact of the realization, a new question has to be asked, what do we do remedy those past wrongs?

 

level:deepsouth— for Generation X

Six months since the inception of this new project level:deepsouth— for Generation X, stories from our generation have been steadily rolling in. After the call for submissions began in late spring, the first inclusions to the anthology were published in July. The earliest submissions came from Kentucky and Alabama, then others came from Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. One book review has been added, and another is on the way in a few days. To read what’s already there, visit the long form, golden days, and reviews pages.

[image error]And the call for submissions goes on, and there’s not just one way to contribute to the project. In addition to publishing essays and memoirs about firsthand experiences, level:deepsouth is also open to works about favorite books, bookstores, and libraries for the in print section; and about favorite songs, records, tapes, CDs, record stores, TV shows, movies, or movie theaters for the watch & listen section.

I understand that some people, now between the ages of 40 and 55, may not want to write about personal stories from their lives in the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, but that shouldn’t prohibit them from making a contribution. First, everyone should remember that not all of the stories are seedy or shameful or hurtful— some good things happened, too. I’d love to receive those works. Or Gen-Xers who grew up in the Deep South can contribute digitized photos to the images section or add a link to an article, video, or website to the lists.

Finally, to those people who have stories to tell but are thinking, “I’m not a writer,” I say you should type it up and send it. I can’t make any promises that it’ll get published, but I am an editor, and if there’s something worthwhile there, we’ll figure that out it, wash off the muck, and make it presentable.

The story of Generation X in the Deep South is rich, complex, and largely untold. What I’ve learned from doing oral histories and some public history is: if you don’t tell your story, someone else will. As a Gen-Xer from Alabama, I see our generation portrayed through The Breakfast Club and Say Anything and  “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and footage from Lollapalooza, but there’s a whole range of Southern experiences that are left out of that understanding. Right now, we can tell the stories that share our truths, and later, when the academics and historians finally come around, these narratives can be the primary sources that explain who we really were. Even though focus was put on New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle in the 1980s and ’90s, the South brought out acts like The Black Crowes, Arrested Development, Drive-by Truckers, and Lil Wayne. But during this time, there was no significant mainstream film or TV portrayal of the lives we were living down here. (The biggest mainstream movies about the South in the 1980s and 1990s were about our parents’ and grandparents’ generations: Steel Magnolias, Fried Green Tomatoes, Driving Miss Daisy, Forrest Gump, and a passel about the Civil Rights era. Films about Generation X in the South were more niche: Crossroads, School Daze, and Sling Blade.) 

I came up with the idea for level:deepsouth years ago, but I knew that it was time for it when I realized that the youngest Gen-Xers were turning 40 this year. (You may have seen Macauley Culkin’s tweet the other when he hit the big 4-0.) In my work as a writer and teacher, I’ve interviewed quite a few older people who tried to answer my questions but could only say, “That was a long time ago, I don’t really remember.” The way I see it, we should collect the stories and get our truths down while our minds are still relatively sharp. We don’t want to leave our generation’s cultural heritage to some wistful, twenty-something Ph.D. student who is trying to interview us when we’re 70 to 85. Imagine explaining the 1980s in the 2050s to somebody born in the 2020s.

With that said, I’d be glad to continue receiving submissions from folks who were born between 1965 and 1980 and grew up in the Deep South. Some of us have spent our whole lives in these southern states, while others may have lived here for a short time. This project is for both groups, as long as the work that is submitted discusses that portion of a young life lived down here. What I’m saying is: check out the website, read the guidelines, write your story, and send it in.

 

Reading: “St. Marks is Dead”

[image error]St. Marks is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street
by Ada Calhoun
My rating: 4 out of 5 stars

Though I’m a Southerner through and through, I have to admit that New York City, and certain parts in particular, is like the Promised Land for anyone with counterculture leanings. That’s what drew me to reading Ada Calhoun’s St. Marks is Dead. Having grown up listening to music made by both hippies and punks, then reading the Beats as a college student, then becoming aware of places like McSorley’s through the writing of Joe Mitchell, this area of New York City — the Bowery, home of CBGB and Tompkins Square Park — holds a fabled status among widely scattered outsiders like me. Certainly this place doesn’t actually exist . . . 

But Calhoun’s book brings it down to Earth. Starting with the Dutch farming family that owned the land in the 1600s — the word bouwerie means ‘small farm’ — and moving though transformative periods of growth, waves of immigrants, and on into wild and seedy times, St. Marks is Dead carries the reader along blocks and into addresses, some of which have junkies and bums sleeping the doorways. Here, we meet unknowns like Mr. Zero and well-knowns like WH Auden. Weirdos and dropouts mingle with working-class immigrant Ukrainians and Puerto Ricans. Shops and bars come and go as the trends do.

What is impressive about the book is its ability to string together disparate characters from disparate time periods. What is difficult about the book is the episodic nature of the narrative, which is made necessary by the story. Ada Calhoun does a good job of showing us the many incarnations of this infamous street, but her subject matter requires that we only meet characters briefly before they fade away again. But maybe that’s the point, that we see St. Marks die and be reborn over and over. 

 

Southern Movie 50: “The Liberation of LB Jones” (1970)

Though Variety called it “not much more than an interracial sexploitation film,” 1970’s The Liberation of LB Jones tells a complex story about race, fairness, conscience, and status in a small Southern town. Based on Jesse Hill Ford’s novel of almost the same name, which was a finalist for the National Book Award in 1966, the film is mainly about the aging white lawyer Oman Hedgepeth, who is the town’s most prominent citizen. However, it is the title character, the town’s black funeral director, who drives the plot by seeking a divorce from his pretty young wife who has been having sex with a white police officer. The last film by German-born William Wyler, who also direct two films based on Lillian Hellman plays – 1941’s Little Foxes and 1961’s The Children’s Hour – The Liberation of LB Jones mixes sex and violence with racial tension to lead its audience down a difficult path.

The film opens showing a train rolling across a rural Southern landscape. A good-looking young white couple can be seen in one of the passenger cars, and they are smiling and smooching as they look out the window. In another seat is a scowling young black man, also looking out the window at the poverty of the black neighborhood along the tracks. The latter man pauses then and checks inside a cigar box he is carrying, showing us a pistol.

Soon, as the train slows, the black man leaves his seat and goes to jump off the train near an intersection where a couple of white police officers have stopped for the crossing. The man lands hard on the ground, the cigar box goes flying, and his jump draws the attention of one of the officers, a swarthy-looking man who comes over to question him. The previously scowling black man then begins to behave awkwardly, swaying about, rubbing his head, and smiling stupidly, maybe pretending to be retarded or at least harmless. He says that he has people in town, that he jumped near where he is going, so the suspicious white officer tells him to watch himself while he’s in town.

The credits roll and funky music plays as we see the train station for (fictional) Somerset, Tennessee. There, waiting on the young white couple, is an older white man in a suit with his black butler. The older man greets the young couple, who smile as they greet him, and they all load up in his big blue station wagon for a ride across the small town, past the courthouse and the tall Civil War monument.

Meanwhile, the black man with the cigar box walks down the street. He goes past a stinky fish market and covers his face, then goes into a small grocery store where a white man stands behind the counter. He buys a couple of items, and next we see him, he’s lying in the grass, grinning, and finishing a big meal. But as he cleans up his trash, he realizes something and panics— the cigar box is missing!

He goes back into the store, where the store owner asks, “Forget something?” to which the man replies, “A box with my things.” The scene then turns tense as the store owner reveals that he looked in the box and can’t let a black man with a loaded gun just walk out. It would be a “dereliction of my duty,” he says, and it would make him an “accomplish” [sic]. As the so-far-nameless black man stares at him coldly, the smiling white store owner says that he doesn’t see why he can’t just keep the gun. Done with the games and ploys, the black man reaches over the counter and forcibly takes the box from the antagonist, causing him to fall into his own shelves and dump items all over the floor. We understand from this interchange, that this newcomer is not to be trifled with.

Back to the parallel story, the big blue station wagon pulls up in front of a law office, whose sign reads “Hedgepeth and Mundine.” The younger man pauses and looks approvingly, then they all go inside. The elder man Oman Hedgepeth (Lee J. Cobb, recognizable as the angriest of the Twelve Angry Men) enter his law office and introduces his secretary to his nephew Steve Mundine (Lee Majors, later of Six Million Dollar Man fame) and Steve’s wife Nella (a young Barbara Hershey, later to star in Boxcar Bertha). Young Steve will be Oman’s new law partner.

Sitting in the lobby of the office, waiting, is a middle-aged black man in a black three-piece suit. Oman speaks to him – he is LB Jones (Roscoe Lee Brown) – and asks him to wait a moment. Oman leads Steve and Nella into a stylish-looking office that Steve will now occupy, then leaves them so he can talk to LB, who quickly explains that he wants a divorce and wants Oman to represent him. Oman asks what the problem is, and LB alludes to infidelity. In a crass move, a smirking Oman replies, about the young wife, “A man your age, can’t you make some concessions?” No, LB tells him, then shares that his wife won’t contest the divorce either. Oman doesn’t want the job, though, and says he is too busy. But before LB can leave, Oman introduces LB to Steve and Nella, then takes the young couple into his office. LB goes without complaining, but Steve is clearly interested in the man and his case, where Oman is not.

Now, the still-nameless, gun-toting black man is walking across a field behind some businesses. He comes to a barbed wire fence, crosses it easily, and arrives at a small club, painted red, with neon beer signs in the windows. Here, his expression changes to something like happiness, and the man even playfully slam-dunks an imaginary basketball on a battered hoop in the yard. Inside the bar is empty, and he calls a woman’s name, “Lavorn.” An elderly woman eases down the stairs but cannot tell who he is in the dark. Yet, when she turns on a light, she recognizes a face she knows and calls him “Sonny Boy.” They both smile, tear up, and hug. The man is clearly home.

Back at the law office, Steve asks if he can take LB Jones’ divorce case. Oman seems perplexed, but Steve says he’s got to start somewhere, so Oman instructs his secretary to call LB about it. After those arrangements are made, Oman, Steve, and Nella get back in the blue station wagon and head home to Oman’s large, white-columned house where the young couple will be staying. 

The scene then shifts to LB Jones in his funeral parlor. He is working on a corpse when a hobbling, elderly woman comes in to pay on her future funeral. She is silly and almost giddy at the idea of having a fine coffin, and the subdued, mild-mannered LB plays along, even humoring her when she wants to go and see the coffin she is paying for. We see here that LB Jones is a kind man, upstanding and fair in his dealings, but also a good business man who knows how to make a buck. Here, we also meet Benny, LB’s assistant, who we follow to the next scene.

Back at the little club, a pretty young woman is dancing as few people sit at the little tables, Benny comes in and dances with woman for a moment, then goes in back, where Mama Lavorn has fixed Sonny Boy a plate of food. At first Benny doesn’t know him, but when Mama reminds him, Benny lights up. She explains that Sonny Boy has been gone for thirteen years, and Sonny Boy replies that what has brought him back is love— and hate. As Mama’s mood sours, Benny asks if he has come back for Bumpas. Sonny replies, smiling, “Stanley Bumpas,” then opens the cigar box to show both of them the gun. Lamenting the circumstance, Mama tells us what is going on: the policeman Stanley Bumpas beat Sonny Boy severely years ago, and she knew back then, as now, that Sonny Boy would eventually kill him. Sonny Boy has come back to do that.

At this point, less than twenty minutes to the movie, we have two parallel plots: the divorce of LB Jones over his wife’s infidelities, and the plan of Sonny Boy to kill Bumpas.

The next we see, LB Jones walks into a loud cattle auction and tries to edge his way past the assembled men, all white, who only half-yield to his passing by. He sits down with Oman, and we get a glimpse into Oman’s character when the white man on the other side of LB gets up and moves, refusing to sit next to a black man, but Oman doesn’t budge. Here, Oman tells LB that his wife has hired a lawyer to contest the divorce, a circumstance that catches LB unaware. “What does it mean,” LB asks Oman. It means they will have to go to court.

LB is soon at his home to confront his wife Emma, who is dressing in their bedroom. Emma is pretty, but also catty and arrogant, everything that the cool and measured LB Jones is not. He asks her about the lawyer, about why she is contesting the divorce, but she only half-answers. He then says that they don’t have to get a divorce, but that she must stop seeing the other man. But Emma laughs at him, saying that Willie Joe is twice the man he is. Their conversation goes in circles, leading nowhere, and soon LB gives up and leaves the house. 

[image error]We begin to understand the problem better in the next scene, as we again meet those two officers who stopped for the train in that early scene. The swarthy officer in the passenger seat calls the driver “Stanley” – this is Stanley Bumpas, who Sonny Boy wants to kill – then tells him that he wants to go visit Emma. The driver retorts by calling Willie Joe by name — this is Emma’s other man — and halfheartedly agrees to drive him there. Here, at the center of the conflict are two white police officers who do as they please, no matter who it hurts: one who has mercilessly beaten a black boy, the other who is shamelessly conducting an affair with a black woman. And if that tension weren’t enough, the police car pulls up in the Jones’ driveway as LB is standing on his porch. Willie Joe pauses for just a moment, but then smiles, says good morning to LB, and walks right past him into his house. LB quietly accepts the insult. In the Jones’ bedroom, Emma falls out of her clothes and into Willie Joe’s arms.

Across town, LB storms into Oman’s law office, defying the secretary who tries to stop him. Oman is talking with Steve over some court papers, but agrees to see LB nonetheless. LB explains that he has talked to Emma, and she will not yield. Oman tries to speak, but LB tells him, “I didn’t come here for advice.” Oman is taken aback, as Steve looks on, then asks what his instructions are. LB says to take it into open court. Oman tries to object, remarking on the unwise move of calling out a white man in open court, but LB replies, “To hell with the white man.” Oman is now really taken aback, but says that he will do what LB asks, and the resolved man leaves.

Oman then carries the film into the issue of late-Civil Rights white liberalism. He looks at Steve and says, “See what you get trying to practice nigger law.” Steve doesn’t like it, but Oman keeps on. We see here that Steve is the idealistic young liberal, and Oman is an older, more practical accommodationist.  Steve wants LB to be treated equally, but Oman knows that it won’t happen that way. Then, Oman hits the brakes and tells Steve that he is going to share a personal story that he has never told anyone. He explains to his young protege that, in law school, he fell in love with a black woman named Cassie, but knew they could never be together. Oman confides that the experience helped him to see at least one black person as a human being, and that his fiancee found out, which is why he never married. Steve tries to apply his own ethics to the situation, but the morally wizened old lawyer says that he has an errand to run and leaves.

Oman’s errand takes him to the police station. First, we see the drunken jailer and two officer heckling a black man who is being booked, then Oman walks in. Willie Joe is there, and Oman pulls him into an office for a heart-to-heart. He explains, with a mock hypothetical, that a certain black undertaker is getting a divorce and that his soon-to-be ex-wife has been having an affair with a white man, but that soon-to-be ex-wife had also gotten a lawyer so it would be going to court, and of course, if that white man happened to be police officer with a family then having his name said out loud in open court could be bad . . . Willie Joe listens to all this, agreeing completely, and at the end of the conversation, also agrees that there are still ways to prevent this from happening. For example, if that white man could talk that woman into not having a lawyer, the whole thing could be resolved quietly. Willie Joe understands what needs to be done. 

Back at Oman’s house, he is lounging in a hammock and drinking whiskey when Steve comes to talk to him. Nella and Steve exchange concerned looks before Steve walks over to Oman, who starts a causal conversation. Steve quickly changes the tone, though, and remarks to the older man how he had once seen him win a big case against a railroad, which caused Oman to be his hero. “But not anymore,” replies Oman. Steve then proceeds to tell Oman that he is a racist. Oman’s response is to admit that it might be true, but the years of navigating the racial complexities in the town have caused him to compromise many times. He tells Steve that he will find himself compromising, too. Steve then tells him that, as a prominent citizen, he could change things, but Oman just grimaces. He is a tired old man now, and he sardonically invites Steve to take the lead on that. Steve leaves disappointed that his idealistic pleas have not changed the old veteran.

However, the tension is even worse at LB’s house. It is now night, and Willie Joe arrives. He walks through the empty house and into the bedroom, where Emma is lounging on the bed. She believes he is there for love, but he isn’t. He starts into her about what it will do to him if their affair is exposed in public. Emma tries to shrug it off, but Willie Joe gets angry and restrains her, shoves her, pulls a gun on her, then slaps her across the face. Now, Emma’s attitude changes, and their relationship changes. Emma invites him to make good on his threats, but Willie Joe doesn’t, and she reminds him that she has become accustomed to a certain lifestyle that Willie Joe can’t pay for. Then, after tense exchange about calling off the lawyers and possibly having Willie Joe talk to LB, Emma reveals that she is pregnant— with Willie Joe’s baby! Willie Joe is flabbergasted and suggests an abortion, but Emma won’t hear of it, so he beats her savagely and leaves.

LB is not at home during all this, because he is at Mama Lavorn’s club on a sales call for funeral arrangements. Over at the bar sits the pretty young woman who tried to dance with Benny earlier. She puts her attention on LB this time, but he keeps seeing Emma’s face on the young woman.

Back out on the streets, we see Willie Joe and Stanley Bumpas again. They have gone to meet a young African American woman who wants to see what she can do to get her husband out of jail. She is obviously nervous and naive, and the two police officers tell her to get into the car. She doesn’t understand why but wants to help her husband, who will lose his job if he is in jail and doesn’t show up for work, so she goes. Of course, they take her outside of town to a secluded area and rape her.

Returning to Mama’s club, Benny has sat down with them, and Mama is talking to LB about his upcoming divorce. She assures LB that she will testify against Willie Joe in court if she needs to, but LB tells her that she need not worry about it. Then LB tells them a story about something he saw once: a black man picketing alone in front of a furniture store, when the white owner came out with a shotgun and ran him off. LB wonders out loud what would have happened if the black man hadn’t run. “He’d be a dead man,” Mama says, and LB muses some more about what it would mean to stand one’s ground. 

After a brief scene, where Willie Joe and Stanley drop off the crying and distraught woman they’ve raped, LB is offered protection by Mama. Sonny Boy will serve as his bodyguard, since “colored can’t go up against white alone.”

LB arrives at home with Sonny Boy and Benny, then goes into his bedroom to find Emma with her face beaten and bruised. He tends to her with kindness, but she breaks into tears and rolls away from him. “Keep going with him, Emma, finally, he’s gonna kill ya,” LB says to her back.

In the morning, Oman is eating breakfast in his grand dining room when Willie Joe arrives to talk with him. He tries to babble out an explanation, but Oman says that all he wants to know is whether it’s “fixed.” Willie Joe says that it isn’t yet but that it will be. Oman then asks him about his wife and kids, about things in general, then shifts his tone, saying that everything’s fine, and “Let’s keep it that way.” Willie Joe gets the message and leaves, and Steve and Oman share a brief word about how Steve has put him up to handling this situation.

The butler Henry interrupts though, jibing Oman about being hard to deal with, then Steve leaves and Nella asks Oman about the black woman he was once involved with. Steve wasn’t supposed to tell anyone, but he told Nella. For a moment, Oman laments losing the opportunity to have a wife and family, telling Nella that she and Steve mean everything to them. Nella doesn’t want to see Steve lose respect for his uncle, but Oman knows it isn’t that simple.

“I don’t understand, what does Steve want of me?” Oman asks.

“To treat LB Jones as if he were white,” Nella answers.

Oman says he doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry, then apprises the young woman that he must follow his own conscience. To end the scene, Henry comes back to provide a little more comic relief.

Across town, Willie Joe shows up at LB’s house. He, Benny, and Sonny Boy are eating breakfast in the kitchen when Willie Joe comes in without knocking. Benny and Sonny Boy hide – in case Willie Joe gets violent, they can spring on him – and the policeman comes in. He then launches into a half-excuse, half-threat speech about how he can be “reasonable” if a certain black man can forget about lawyers and divorces and let things stay as they as are. Stanley Bumpas is honking the horn outside, making Willie Joe even more tense, so he closes out with LB by saying that he wants to get word by 6:00 PM on Monday that the whole thing is “called off.” LB remains stoic and silent, and Willie Joe says, “Don’t ever say you weren’t told,” then leaves. As they’re preparing to leave themselves, Sonny Boy acknowledges what he has also overheard during Willie Joe’s tirade, that Stanley Bumpas – the man he came to kill – will be working on his farm all day.

Next we see, Stanley is on his tractor, and Sonny Boy is sneaking over to get near him. Sonny Boy aims the pistol through a space in a log as Stanley approaches, but he doesn’t shoot. He then pauses, closes his eyes, turns around, and puts the gun back in the cigar box as he starts to laugh. Back at the cafe, he is still laughing as he tells Mama what happened. “I don’t have no blood on my hands,” he tells her. Mama replies, “Lordy, Lordy, this is the day.”

Later, at the police station, Willie Joe is lamenting that he has not heard from LB. Stanley reminds him that he has to handle it, and the two men leave. 

At LB’s office, the phone rings, and the person hangs up as LB answers. He turns the light off and goes to leave. The clock shows 8:25 PM, and the phone rings again. This time, it is Sonny Boy saying that Benny has been arrested and is in jail. LB tells them that he is on his way down there, but he stops first to talk to Emma. He is once again stoic, while Emma is smug, calling him “foolish” and “big man” over what she knows his decision to be: to take on the white establishment. 

LB gets into his black Cadillac and is soon trailed by Willie Joe and Stanley, who pull him over in an isolated area. Willie Joe orders LB out of the car and puts LB in the back of the police car. As Willie Joe beats LB in the back seat, Stanley drives to a wooded area, but LB jumps out of the car and makes a run for it. He soon arrives at a junkyard and tries to hide among the rusty car hulls. But Willie and Stanley also make their way to the junkyard. They begin to search, but lose him.

It is at this point that LB Jones has his “liberation.” As he sits, hiding, he has a flashback to the incident at the furniture store where the picketer was chased off. LB Jones will no longer run. He comes out calmly and surrenders. Stanley says that LB has realized there was no using in running. And LB replies, “I’m not running . . . anymore.” Then, Willie Joe gives him several last chances to call off the divorce as he beats him, but LB still refuses. Stanley intervenes and tapes LB’s mouth, then Willie Joe shoots him in the back of the head. LB Jones falls over dead. To cover up their blatant murder, Stanley mutilates LB’s body while Willie Joe vomits, then they hang up LB’s body to make it seems as though he were killed for some other reason.

Back at the jail, Stanley tells the drunk jailer that they’ve killed LB Jones. The jailer is surprised, and Stanley tells him that they’ll manufacture some charges and arrest someone for it. 

At the junkyard, a small crowd of black people have come to witness and to take down LB’s body. Sonny Boy cradles the smaller man like a child and gently closes his eyes, as Mama looks on. 

In the morning, Oman gets the phone call from the distraught mayor (Dub Taylor) that LB jones is dead. Henry brings in his juice and coffee, and remarks, without being told by Oman what has happened, “It could’ve happened to anyone.” (News must have traveled fast in the black community, since Henry already knew.) At the mayor’s office, Oman talks first to the mayor then to the police chief, asking to see Benny and Emma, who have been accused and have signed confessions. The chief admits that he used a cattle prod to incite them to sign. The problem is that Benny was locked up in the cell all night— Oman reminds them that only a very cunning man could escape the jail, kill LB, and sneak back into jail where he would confess to murder! The snafu is obvious, even to the corrupt police, and both are released. Yet, on his way out of the jail, Benny passes Emma and slaps hell out of her.

Back in the mayor’s office, Oman and the mayor are talking to Willie Joe, who has turned himself in for killing LB. Willie Joe says that Oman told him what to do— to “fix” it. So he did, he fixed it, he killed LB Jones. While the mayor and Willie Joe argue over culpability, Oman is left to contend with the results of his own actions, of his own racism, of his own accommodations of injustice.  Oman then launches into another one of these accommodations, telling Willie Joe to be a stand-up guy, to think of his family, and to promise to be silent about what he has done. Willie Joe agrees, and Oman switches his gun with another. From his position as city lawyer, Oman Hedgepeth has helped his town to avert racial strife and civil unrest at the expense of justice.

Steve arrives at city hall next and questions Oman in the hallway about what has happened. Oman’s only reply is that they’ve handled it “the way things have always been handled in this town . . . quietly.” Steve is silently disappointed, while Oman drives off in his car.

Meanwhile, out on his farm, Stanley Bumpas is once again on his tractor. In the aftermath of LB’s murder, Sonny Boy once again comes to confront the white man, but this time, doesn’t do it from hiding. He walks boldly across the open field and points a gun squarely at Stanley. Sonny Boy’s expression is cold, as Stanley is quaking with fear. But instead of shooting Stanley, Sonny Boy shoves him into the teeth of the combine. Stanley is chewed and gnarled as Sonny Boy watches.

Back at home, Oman sees a taxi cab pull up in his driveway, and Steve and Nella are coming downstairs with their suitcases. Steve will not remain in Oman’s house, nor will he remain as his law partner, and on the way out only says one word to his uncle, “Goodbye.” Nella stops and hugs him briefly then follows her husband out. As the couple leaves in the taxi, gospel music plays, then the scene shifts to LB Jones’ funeral.

The Liberation of LB Jones then ends as it began, with Steve and Nella and Sonny Boy on the train. This time, they’re leaving town.

In May 2020, amid protests over the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and Ahmad Arbery, The New Yorker‘s Richard Brody had The Liberation of LB Jones in his “What to Stream” column. I had heard of the film years ago, and had seen it already, but it’s a particularly elusive one and even appears in rare-movie lists. While I wasn’t surprised by Brody’s timing, his description was a stark contrast to that assessment in Variety; Brody wrote, “if not an unmitigated artistic masterwork, [it] does offer an illuminating view of history and also a disturbingly accurate picture of what hasn’t changed in America in the intervening half century.” Not exactly “interracial sexploitation.” 

For me, The Liberation of LB Jones falls into a category with movies like The Klansman and White Lightning. Nothing is easy in these films. The answers aren’t simple or clear. There are some powerful films (and some bad ones) about race and class in Southern small towns from the 1960s and 1970s, but even some of the best wrap things up neatly in the end, like In the Heat of the Night. But The Liberation of LB Jones doesn’t do that. The brutal Stanley Bumpas may be dead, but Emma and Willie Joe go free. As LB’s wife, Emma will even enjoy LB’s wealth after he’s gone, where Benny will have to continue without his friend. Ultimately, too, Oman will remain powerful and influential but lonely, likely continuing his long-standing habit of “fixing” things. 

Like The Klansman, this story is also difficult to accept in a modern context, because it focuses so heavily on the struggles of the white liberal, rather than on the injustice perpetrated against African Americans. Was this film really about liberation, considering that LB dies only moments after he ceases to be afraid? Is that the message: that blacks only have the choice to live in fear or die? There’s also Sonny Boy, who had liberated himself from trauma without committing murder, only to be driven to murder in the end. Then there’s Steve, the white idealist who regards himself as free of racism but who doesn’t act then simply leaves. And finally, Oman: was he liberated? At the end of the film, all we see is his back. 

The Liberation of LB Jones is more than an exploitation film, but it does have some of those elements and a little bit of that styling. About its Southern-ness, the characters are realistic enough, as is the scenario. Racial lines have been crossed, corrupt police have terrorized black citizens, and eventually one man has had enough. He will take action to see justice prevail, knowing he will lose his life for it. Meanwhile, comfortable people maneuver and plot behind the scenes, prioritizing their own comfort and peace over any pursuit of justice or fairness. The way some saw it, LB Jones needed to suck it up and suffer the indignity, so that ordinary life could go on in the town. Despite the philandering and the hypocrisy, what really mattered was maintaining the status quo.

Note: Here, I use the date 1970, not 1969, for the film. Most current resources online list the date as 1970, and IMDb has the release date as March 18, 1970. However, the copyright date in the film’s credits is 1969, and the date on the Variety review is 1969.