Foster Dickson's Blog, page 40
July 17, 2019
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “Thinking One Way, Voting Another”
[image error]The Spring 2017 Alabama Public Opinion Survey, conducted by the Public Affairs Research Council of Alabama (PARCA), shows some disturbing conclusions about the political ideas in my home state. Hardest to swallow are two graphs on page 23, which explain that 63% of the people polled “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” that they “Have No Say in What the Government in Montgomery Does” and a whopping 69% “Agree” or “Strongly Agree” that “Officials in Montgomery Don’t Care What People Like Me Think.” The polling from 2007 through 2017 shows that roughly half to two-thirds of Alabamians feel that way consistently.
Likewise, a few pages ahead of those disconcerting line graphs, we see a bar graph that explains how 76.7% of Alabamians polled answered “Yes” when asked, “Do you think the level of school funding makes a difference in the quality of education?” (Somehow, 17.3% of respondents answered “No,” and I’d be curious about how they came to that conclusion.) About three-quarters of Alabamians, then, believe the old adage that “you get what you pay for” when it comes to our education system.
July 16, 2019
Dirty Boots: “Reflecting on the National Sustainability Teachers’ Academy”
Two weeks ago, I attended Arizona State University’s week-long National Sustainability Teachers’ Academy, which was held on the campus of the University of Montana in Missoula, and while the overt lessons presented during the professional-development workshop were about sustainability – obviously – peripheral discussions among the participants also caught my attention. Granting that these attendees were probably more progressive than average, I found two things remarkable as I listened: how behind the times we truly down here in the Deep South, and how many people around the country are humbly and thanklessly working to make it better.
[image error]One of the prime lessons of the academy was to underscore that the idea of sustainability is not solely environmental, but must also include an understanding of society and the economy. A sustainable model for living, working, consuming, and disposing of waste must be equitable and just, answering the needs of all people involved. We’re going to consume the food, energy, and other goods that are required in our lives, certainly, but a sustainable approach would take into account the effects of that usage, including an honest assessment of who enjoys the benefits and who bears the burdens. Using a historical example from the South, an economy built on slavery was never a sustainable, because the people who bore the greatest burdens received the fewest benefits. Using another, more recent example from close to home, a shift to renewable energy sources could not only reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, it would also alleviate the dumping of coal ash in places like Uniontown, Alabama— in part because there would be less (or no) coal ash to dump!
Also close to home, I realized during the academy how ordinary Alabamians are not asked, much less required, to be active participants in sustainability efforts. As teachers from New Jersey and Vermont talked about separating their trash, recycling, and composting, both at home and at school, all I could think about was how my city’s recycling program has crashed twice in recent years, and how I was going back to my school to start a composting program. But that wasn’t all. One teacher from Iowa told us about how he had returned acres upon acres of what had been his family farm to being tallgrass prairie again. Another from Colorado showed us videos of taking students on week-long trips down the rapids on the canyons, where they learned to travel light and not to leave waste behind. Yet another worked for an organization that plants and cares for trees and orchards in urban Philadelphia . . .
(Perhaps the most eye-opening thing was that some people in America use a bidet. I’ve seen these things in movies and in a high-end hotels when I’ve traveled, but I didn’t think anyone actually used one. What I learned is that, even though a bidet uses water in place of toilet paper, the practice actually uses less water overall, since the water used in making toilet paper has to be factored in. I’m still not sure whether I’d want to wash my butt instead of wiping it, but it’s something to be aware of.)
Despite my chagrin at the situation here at home, a brief web search when I returned did reveal that we aren’t devoid of sustainability programs in Alabama. The first page or two of web search results show that the University of Alabama, UA branch campuses in Birmingham and Huntsville, and Auburn University all have programs in place, as do the cities of Birmingham and Huntsville. Likewise, the US Green Building Council’s webpage describes school-based sustainability projects around state. And a number of environmental nonprofits are working hard all the time to encourage and enable better ways of living, farming, eating, breathing, learning, building, making, and doing business.
The missing piece, it seems to me, is the grassroots effort – what organizational folks like to call “stakeholder involvement” – which would mean asking Alabama’s four-plus-million people to change some of our daily habits and, perhaps more importantly, some ingrained albeit unproductive mindsets. To implement more sustainable systems, we have to ask all people to have sustainable daily practices. I know that the challenges are real – how to pay for it, how to enforce new policies – but it’s high time we think about how and try something, instead of just lamenting the difficulties or, worse, giving up before before we even begin.
Despite what people in other parts of the country may call our state, our moniker is “Alabama the Beautiful.” However, the website WalletHub ranks our state 45th in their list of “Greenest States,” and within that, 48th in “Eco-Friendly Behaviors.” We also rank 37th in the US News state pollution rankings. Understanding sustainability as not only environmental, but also social and economic, I can’t help but tie those facts to social-justice issues the state also faces: inadequate schools, a dependence on federal funds, weak public services, a regressive tax system— all of which are unsustainable. Alabama should be beautiful for all of its people, not just the ones leading comfortable lives. As the old adage goes: a rising tide lifts all boats.
“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To read find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.
July 12, 2019
Disrupters & Interlopers: Theresa Burroughs
Mrs. Theresa Burroughs was an active worker for civil rights and voting rights in the Black Belt of Alabama. Looking through news coverage and other documents describing the movement in Hale County and nearby areas, Burroughs name appears often.
Burroughs was born Theresa Turner in 1929, as the Great Depression began, in already depressed western Alabama. She married a mechanic named Kenneth Burroughs, and the couple had four children. After earning a degree in cosmetology, she became a beautician and opened her own business, Burroughs Beauty Bar.
Though she had already been leading voting rights efforts in Hale County, Burroughs’ notoriety increased in March 1965 when she was among the marchers attacked by Alabama state troopers on the Edmund Pettus Bridge. Three years later, in March 1968, she also hid Martin Luther King, Jr. from white supremacists in Greensboro who sought him as a target for further violence. However, her civil-rights organizing did not end in the ’60s. Due to the persistent nature of local white-supremacist resistance, it continued; Burroughs is even named as still active in Hale County in a 1983 editorial by JL Chestnut, Jr.
In the 2000s, Burroughs worked with the Rural Studio to create Greensboro, Alabama’s Safe House Black History Museum, which opened in 2009. The restored shotgun house is a memorial to the movement years, specifically to the night she sheltered King.
Theresa Burroughs passed away in Greensboro, Alabama in May 2019, at the age of 89. To learn more about her, StoryCorps has an interview with her and daughter Toni Love. Roy Hoffman’s book Alabama Afternoons: Profiles and Conversations also devotes a chapter to her.
The Disrupters & Interlopers series highlights lesser-known individuals from Southern history whose actions, though unpopular or difficult, contributed to changing the old status quo. To read previous posts, click any of the links below:
July 11, 2019
#throwbackthursday: the Dexter Avenue paintings, 2009
Before Montgomery’s twenty-first century revitalization had hit its stride, quite a few of the storefronts on Dexter Avenue, downtown’s main thoroughfare, were covered in paintings by a local artist who, I assume, was given the freedom to use the mostly boarded-up sites as his canvasses. Some of the paintings depicted Biblical scenes, while others were brighter and more lively images of local figures. The pictures were taken ten years ago, in the summer of 2009.
July 10, 2019
Lazy Afternoon Reruns: “My Source for Some Definitive”
In the “People” section of the April 26, 1989 issue of the Atlanta Constitution newspaper, the headline read, “It’s Full Speed Ahead for Local Indigo Girls.” The article below explained that the folk-rock duo of Amy Ray and Emily Saliers was on tour with REM, had an album that had gone gold, was about to appear on the David Letterman Show, and had plans to tour with both Bob Dylan and Neil Young. Furthermore, their first single “Closer to Fine” was scheduled to “be shipped to commercial radio stations nationally in late May.” That was thirty years ago today.
Other mentions in the Constitution from that summer shared that the Indigo Girls album had moved up to #74 on the Billboard charts by July, and in late August was at #55. As 1990 began, The Indigo Girls were Grammy-nominated, in the Best New Artist and Best Contemporary Folk Album categories. They won the award in the latter.
Though it never reached the top-ten on the Billboard charts, that album’s first single “Closer to Fine” may be one of the most influential songs from Generation X. Alongside “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” “Teen Angst,” and “Alive,” “Closer to Fine” grabs at something that a lot of us felt as we foraged through our teenage years at a time when the cheesy ’80s were shifting gears into the fin de siecle angst of the ’90s.
July 9, 2019
Dirty Boots: “Our Last-ness”
[image error]In Alabama, thinkers from all points on the political spectrum seem to enjoy raising the issue of our last-ness. Whether the tone toward the facts is deep consternation, an indifferent shrug, or something in-between, the tendency to comment on or allude to our position at the bottom spans the boundaries of race, gender, class, and political affiliation. We all seem to have something to say about it— me included.
US News & World Report currently ranks Alabama as 49th overall among the states, with a breakdown showing that we’re 50th in Education, 46th in Healthcare, and 45th in the categories of Economy, Opportunity, and Crime & Corrections. The only shining light there is being ranked 23rd in Fiscal Stability, which I take to mean that our situation is more likely than half the states’ to stay how it is. (Despite the dark humor of saying “Thank God for Mississippi,” Louisiana actually came in last, while the Magnolia State was in the slot above us.)
Alabama also has the worst prison system in the nation, including the highest murder rates within those prisons. The system houses about 16,000 inmates in conditions so severely overcrowded, unclean, and unsafe that the US Department of Justice has declared them to be unconstitutional. We lack both a statewide public defender system and strong rehabilitation programs, which leads us to put too many people in prison for too long. A recent news report from al.com shared that, if Alabama was country, not a state, we would have the 5th highest incarceration rate in the world:
Alabama’s rate of incarceration – at 987 people in jail or prison for every 100,000 people – dwarfs those of every nation around the globe, including those of troubled countries like Iraq, Cuba and Syria.
Last month, a report from Annie E. Casey Foundation ranked Alabama 44th in child well-being, with a break down of 44th in Economic Well-Being, 38th in Education (in contrast to US News saying 50th), 36th in Health, and 44th in Family & Community. What appears to have helped us in the Health area was AllKids, a children’s health insurance program for low-income families. The confusing side of this report is that Alabama improved in sub-areas but dropped two spots in the overall ranking. The disheartening side of it is reading that we have 265,000 children living in poverty and 24,000 teenagers who are neither in school nor working.
In addition to those rankings, CDC statistics also rank Alabama second-to-last in infant mortality with a rate of 9.6 per 1,000. Mississippi really was worse this time – much worse, at 11.5 – though four other states’ rates came close to ours (between 9.0 and 9.5) The national average is 5.8, a rate we nearly double. Infant mortality is a particularly dubious category, since it concerns the number of babies that die before their first birthday. This dismal fact is one of several, too, that relate to our children.
Furthermore, as peripheral consequence of our consistent refusal to deal with deplorable conditions, unproductive systems, and errant personalities, Alabama’s 4.7 million residents also endure every kind of harassment, from the jibes of comedians to threats of boycotts on social media. In recent years alone, our state’s historical footprint, which already included slavery, J. Marion Sims, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men, George Wallace, and resistance to Civil Rights, has added Roy Moore, Goodloe Sutton, and a super-strict anti-abortion laws to an already intense litany.
Personally, I’m more interested in remedies for our last-ness than in the sheer fact of it, and I only see one viable long-term fix: to rewrite Alabama’s state constitution to create a new system of governance that works in the twenty-first century. Our current governing document was crafted nearly 120 years ago with the express goal “to establish white supremacy in this State,” and it is outmoded, outdated, and outlandish. This constitution concentrates power in the state legislature, which has control over budgets, lawmaking, everything, even some local matters. Looking at it pragmatically, a new constitution could be written to achieve a balance of powers, and systems could be designed to achieve modern and worthwhile goals, as opposed to continuing a system that was created to serve ugly and hateful goals and to suit a time that does not resemble ours. The solution is not to elect different officials— the solution, which will require courage, fortitude, and honesty, is to re-design the system under which those officials operate. Then, maybe, if we reboot Alabama’s politics entirely, we can begin a true journey toward progress.
“Dirty Boots: A Column of Critical Thinking, Border Crossing, and Noblesse Oblige,” a weekly column published every Tuesday afternoon, offers a Deep Southern, Generation X perspective on life in the 21st century. To read find and read previous posts, click here for a full list.
July 8, 2019
#ICYMI: Closed Ranks
– Alabama Writers Forum
From the publisher’s description:
On a chilly December afternoon in 1975, Bernard Whitehurst Jr., a 33-year-old father of four, was mistaken for a robbery suspect by Montgomery, Alabama, police officers. A brief foot chase ensued, and it ended with one of the pursuing officers shooting and killing Whitehurst in the backyard of an abandoned house. The officer claimed the fleeing man had fired at him; police produced a gun they said had been found near the body. In the months that followed, new information showed that Whitehurst, who was black, was not only the wrong man but had been unarmed, a direct contradiction of the white officer’s statement. What became known as the Whitehurst Case erupted when the local district attorney and the family’s attorney each began to uncover facts that pointed to wrongdoing by the police, igniting a year-long controversy that resulted in the resignation or firing of police officers, the police chief, and the city’s popular New South mayor. However, no one was ever convicted in Whitehurst’s death, and his family’s civil lawsuit against the City of Montgomery failed. Now, more than four decades later, Whitehurst’s widow and children are waging a 21st-century effort to gain justice for the husband and father they lost. The question that remains is: who decides what justice looks like?
In this latter-day exploration of the Whitehurst Case, author Foster Dickson reviews one of Montgomery’s never-before-told stories, one which is riddled with incompatible narratives. Closed Ranks brings together interviews, police reports, news stories, and other records to carry the reader through the fraught post-civil rights movement period when the “unnecessary” shooting of Bernard Whitehurst Jr. occurred.
In our current time, as police shootings regularly dominate news cycles, this book shows how essential it is to find and face the truth in such deeply troubling matters.
Closed Ranks: The Whitehurst Case in Post-Civil Rights Montgomery was published by NewSouth Books in November 2018. Copies can be purchased from major retailers like Amazon and ordered through local retailers.
July 7, 2019
Thank you, Herschel Gaston and WKCG!
[image error]Thank you to Herschel Gaston and producer Antwan Hillman for having me as a guest on Real Talk with Herschel yesterday! During the second hour of the program, we talked about the Closed Ranks and the Whitehurst Case, Montgomery’s history and politics, and the legacy of social justice after a police shooting. WKCG 99.1 FM is based in Dothan, Alabama.
Closed Ranks: The Whitehurst Case in Post-Civil Rights Montgomery was published by NewSouth Books in November 2018. Copies can be purchased from major retailers like Amazon and ordered through local retailers.
July 3, 2019
#ICYMI: Southern Movies
[image error]Over more than a century, mainstream movies have offered portrayals of the American South that range from the darkness of 1918’s Birth of a Nation to the fluffiness of 2002’s Sweet Home Alabama. Many Americans who have never visited the South (and know little to nothing about it) take their understanding of our complicated culture not from history books by Shelby Foote or C. Vann Woodward, but from the images, characters, and story lines in popular films, like Gone with the Wind, Forrest Gump, The Help, and Fried Green Tomatoes. (Personally, I don’t know anybody who ever killed and barbecued an abusive husband.) Whether they are set in the South, feature Southern characters, or both, movies feed and fuel how Americans view and treat the South, and also perpetuate and protect misinterpretations. Below is a list of Southern Movie posts. Just click on the title to read:
Straw Dogs (2013) • tick . . . tick . . . tick . . . (1970)
Intruder in the Dust (1949) • Black Snake Moan (2006)
The Black Klansman (1966) • Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
Way Down South (1939) • The Waterboy (1998)
Greased Lightning (1977) • The Green Pastures (1936)
The Southerner (1945) • Down by Law (1986)
In the Heat of the Night (1967) • The Phenix City Story (1955)
The Children’s Hour (1961) • Lemora: A Child’s Tale of the Supernatural (1973)
Norma Rae (1979) • Walking Tall (1973) • Radio (2003)
Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil (1997)
Sounder (1972) • Sophie and the Rising Sun (2017)
Mud Bound (2017) • Ode to Billy Joe (1976)
Black Like Me (1964) • Shy People (1987) • Slaves (1969)
Moonshine County Express (1977) • Angel Heart (1987)
Wise Blood (1979) • Baby Doll (1956) • Preacherman (1971)
Southern Comfort (1981) • White Lightning (1973)
Drums in the Deep South (1951) • Paris Trout (1991)
Hot Summer in Barefoot County (1974) • Free State of Jones (2016)
French Quarter (1978)
Coming: The Dynamiter (2011)
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June 29, 2019
Southern Movie 38: “French Quarter” (1978)
Let’s just start by being clear that 1978’s French Quarter is a weird, half-baked frame narrative whose dual-world, time-warp fantasy underpinning doesn’t make a lot of sense. But what the movie lacks in coherence it makes up for by . . . never mind, it doesn’t make up for it. What it does instead is patchwork together the seedier, jazzier side of early twentieth-century New Orleans history under the umbrella of life in a French Quarter brothel. The historical figures are there – jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton, a young Louis Armstrong, photographer EJ Bellocq – and they are presented to us through a love story involving a virgin prostitute who will be auctioned off and a white piano prodigy who is in over his head.
[image error]French Quarter begins in modern times – the late 1970s, that is – with a young woman who is fleeing her small-town, bayou roots and heading to the big city of New Orleans. She is pretty and blonde and holding a suitcase as she weeps over an above-ground grave in a bayou. We hear a man’s voice flippantly explain that her father was deeply in debt, and thus left her less than nothing. She picks up her suitcase, hat, and shoes, and walks among to mossy trees to the road, as a new voice – a male voiceover – picks up narrating her plight: “She was one of those girls as rare as snow on the bayou,” the voice tells us.
The young woman boards a bus, pays her fee, and gets off in New Orleans as the voiceover continues to tell us about her. In his own stalker way, the voice explains that he knows about this young woman because he has seen others like her, the ones who arrive in New Orleans hoping to find something. As the young woman sits beside St. Louis Cathedral and browses the newspaper want ads, he tells us that that “those who wants something real bad . . . usually get it real bad.” The young woman gets up and tries in three places – a clothing shop, a candy shop, and a restaurant – to get jobs, but nothing doing. Meanwhile, the voiceover outs himself, showing us only his back among the crowds, as he follows her through the French Quarter. We already sense the tension: country girl come to town, all alone, followed by a strange man, flat broke and begging in New Orleans.
After those failures, she wanders into the empty Storyville Lounge, past a black woman mopping the floor, and plops down at the bar. She tries to order an oyster sandwich but the kitchen is closed, and she doesn’t want a drink. After putting her head on the bar like a sad puppy, the female bartender asks her what’s wrong. Hearing that she needs a job, the woman points her to the one man at sitting the bar. The young woman introduces herself as Christine Delaplane and has a brief cat-and-mouse conversation, in which she tries to evade disclosing her desperation. The seedy man sees through her though and gets to the point: he is hiring topless dancers. He loans her a few dollars to get an outfit to audition in, and Christine heads for the lingerie shop to get some skimpy panties and pasties.
In the dressing room, Christine sits among the other barely dressed dancers, before going on. After a woman in red lingerie finishes, Christine goes out on the stage and performs an extremely awkward and un-sexy routine in her own black lingerie set. The voiceover comes back to say that this was the first time he really saw the young woman (even though we just saw him following her earlier). After proclaiming at the end of her dance, “I hope y’all liked it,” the crowd claps for her a bit, and she has the job.
The next we see Christine, she is irate and yelling at the owner of the club who just hired her. She has a check for $25, which she is sorely dissatisfied with, and he explains that that’s her pay— minus a room, bills, and rental of her costume. Christine responds angrily that she just wants bus fare home, and the man tells her that she has all she’s getting: a check for $25. Stuck, unable to cash the check, the bartender who took pity on her to begin with suggests that she go see a woman named Florinda Beaudine, who practices voodoo and lives above an apothecary shop. Florinda owes her a favor and should let Christine stay rent-free if she helps clean up. “She’s helped lots of girls like you,” the bartender says.
Christine goes down the street and into the empty shop, calling out but receiving no answer. She then wanders up the stairs and runs into Madame Beaudine, an ugly and strange woman who invites her in and tells her not to worry. Beaudine gives her a cup of tea that immediately makes Christine feel woozy, and the old woman helps her to the bed. As this is happening, the voiceover returns, telling us cryptically that he expected this to happen but that it will take time. “This is how I make my money,” the voiceover explains, but he won’t intervene yet.
From this point, the movie shifts to the inner frame of the story. In this inner frame, there is soft light and a soft edge around the screen. Now, Christine, who has become Gertrude “Trudy” Dix, is lying on a bed in the brothel of Countess Willie Piazza, who we recognize as the female bartender from the first part of the story. It is now the 1910s, not the 1970s, and flamboyant prostitutes are cackling, galavanting half-dressed, and jibing each other, as we meet them one-by-one in the kitchen. A newcomer to the place, Trudy is virgin . . . who will be auctioned off.
Next, we meet Jelly Roll Morton, the house piano player, as he is told that a new piano player is coming to audition. Morton is unhappy about this, but then Kid Ross is seen ambling up the street and meeting a little boy named Satchmo. Morton is black, of course, and Ross is white, and Satchmo is Louis Armstrong, of course, and when introduced, the two piano players have an immediate tension. Kid Ross is a prodigy from Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Morton is the one of the early inventors of jazz— and both men are trying to earn a living in the seedy Storyville section of New Orleans.
After Morton and Ross play a friendly but competitive duet, one of the prostitutes is brought in to perform a burlesque for the male customers. Her name is Lady Lil, and she wears a mask as she strips and writhes in a large glass bowl full of soapy water, which seems to be meant to imitate a huge champagne glass. As the panting men and grinning women watch, Morton goes behind a screen, explaining to the newbie Ross that black men aren’t allowed to watch white women dance, which he does anyway through a tear in the fabric.
At the end of the night, Kid Ross is told by Trudy that he has the job, and Jelly Roll Morton is friendly about his new co-worker but will not share the tip money. Trudy tells him that she has to go to bed, since they’re taking pictures of her tomorrow (for the auction), and as she ascends the stairs, Ross composes a sentimental riff for her.
In the next scene, one of the young prostitutes goes in to wake Coke-Eyed Laura, another of the prostitutes who we’ve been told is a druggie. Laura is lying in her bed, has long scratches across her back, and winces as she moves. The young woman applies some water or medicine to the scratches, then for some unstated reason, as Laura rolls over, the two begin a lesbian sex scene.
The next two scenes move the plot forward in a disjointed way. First, three of the women are in the apothecary picking up an STD cure, when one of them apprises Laura that their competitor Emma Johnson is trying to obtain a virgin to have there, and insinuates that Laura is trying to help her and effectively sabotage their own employer. Laura replies flippantly that she knows nothing about it, then asks for some opium, but is reminded that no “dope” is allowed. Angered by the charges and by the rebuke, Laura grits her teeth in an animalistic way and leaves. Next, Kid Ross and Trudy are having coffee in the courtyard, and Trudy shows her naivete when Ross mentions Emma Johnson, too. Ross goes on to ask about Tom Anderson, the politician, gambler, and all-around rascal who sort of runs things in the Quarter. Trudy has never heard of him either.
The story then moves to an underground New Orleans jazz club, full or raw music and raw dancing. The place is jumping until the proprietor Aaron Harris stops one of his women for fighting, saying to her, “If you want to fight somebody, fight me.” When she won’t, he punches her in the stomach, then slaps her to the floor. But Kid Ross shouts from across the room, “That’s enough,” and the two men begin to fight. Of course, Kid Ross wins, but the mood has been soured. As that scene is ending, one of the prostitutes with him wonders out loud where Laura is, and we see a nearly naked Laura in a voodoo ceremony, with a very large snake crawling over her body. The juxtaposition of the two loud, raucous scenarios is obviously an effort to connect one side of the dark underbelly to another.
Back at the house, we meet Tom Anderson, who is caressing a marble statue salaciously. (Tom is played by the same actor as the topless bar owner that cheated Christie in the beginning of the movie, only this time he has a big fake mustache pasted on his face.) He has come to see Willie Piazza about Emma Johnson’s offer to buy Trudy. He believes that the offer is fair, but Willie responds that Emma’s house is a “cesspool.” The scene then cuts to Kid Ross and Trudy Dix having a nice ride in the country in Tom’s new Ford car. They are discussing Trudy’s future, just like Tom and Willie are. After the scenes have bounced back and forth, we get Tom’s ultimatum that Willie has two weeks to sell Trudy to Emma Johnson, at the same time that Kid Ross shares his plan to move to Chicago . . . and wants Trudy to come with him. They end in a passionate embrace, kissing and rubbing together.
The next evening is the auction. Trudy is dolled up, and the men are duly assembled. The bidding begins at $300 and is quickly driven up and up to $650. It looks like one of the regular customers will win her, when suddenly Kid Ross shouts, “Eight hundred dollars!” Willie Piazza is confounded but has to concede to his bid. He wins the frightened, crying girl, who he is now in love with, and next we see the two, they’re relaxing on the morning after, talking about their plans, before they have another roll in the sheets.
However, the love-story happy ending can’t be here just yet. Nearby, Tom Anderson is in bed with Laura, telling her that she has blown his mind again. She’s very proud of herself and tells him, too, that he has lost his virgin, that Kid Ross has deflowered Trudy— there will be no sale to Emma Johnson. An angry Tom tells Laura to do away with both of them any way she chooses, with voodoo or otherwise, and to include Aaron Harris or anyone else. Laura relishes the opportunity.
In the daylight, Kid Ross and Trudy walk in a foggy cemetery, as somber music plays. They talk about what happens next. Kid Ross has spent the money (buying Trudy) that he was going to use to buy into a jazz club in Chicago, but he knows that he has to leave town. (He has pissed off Aaron Harris and now Tom Anderson, too.) Trudy knows that doesn’t bode well for her, but Ross insists that he’ll only be gone for a week.
Back at the brothel, a wild party is going on! Loud music plays, and costumed prostitutes strut around with the men. The film stays focused for longer than it should on two people having sex in a rocking chair using pairs of roller skates to propel themselves. All the while, Trudy sits outside quietly in the dark— until the voodoo priestess (played by the same actress who was Madame Beaudine earlier) begins to cast a spell on Trudy. Now, the wild scenes interplay, and we see some of the same imagery as the voodoo scene with Laura earlier: half-dressed black people dancing and writhing, men spitting fire. Trudy is mesmerized and, with a black symbol on her forehead, wanders down the street to be chained down naked on the altar by the voodoo people.
As the scene culminates, Kid Ross is meandering down the street himself and speaks to Satchmo, inviting him to the upcoming wedding. Satchmo informs him that Trudy has been taken by the voodoo people. Shocked, Kid Ross has no idea what to do, and Satchmo tells him to follow the drums. In the dungeon-like voodoo locale, Trudy is screaming and the creepy old priestess is holding a snake to put on her . . . when a black handgun enters the picture. This continues alternating until the guns fires—
And we’re back in the 1970s, where two police detectives burst into Madame Beaudine’s little apartment and find Trudy/Christine still passed out on the bed. While the second detective unties an unconscious Christine, the first detective, who fends off an attempted stabbing by Beaudine, reads Miranda rights to the scowling offender. Through their banter, we find out that the old woman sells young girls to wealthy men in foreign countries and that the officer in the beginning of the movie had been following Christine since she got off the bus. When Christine says that she’d like to thank him, he enters the bedroom— and it’s Kid Ross AKA Inspector Sordik! (I’m not sure why they gave him the euphemistic name Inspector Sore Dick but they did.)
As French Quarter ends, the happy couple is shopping in a market where we see one or two of the players from the brothel scene. The voiceover returns and gives us a history lesson on where everyone ended up, but does warns us that some of the story is fact while some is “wild conjecture.” Though it makes little sense, the voiceover explains that he is a descendant of the story, and that’s how he came to be part of it. In the end, Christine and the two detectives ride away in a white convertible.
There aren’t many reviews or commentaries on French Quarter. Movie critic Leonard Maltin wrote that it is a “neglected drive-in treat [and] a genuine curiosity,” called it a “tongue-in-cheek melodrama,” and remarked that it “ended bizarrely.” All true, I think. In general, the movie is very dated to the late ’70s, the acting is not good, and the story is forced. Sometimes, with movies like this one, it’s better to leave well enough alone. (I couldn’t even find the movie’s trailer to share.)
One of the problems with presenting history in cinema is the time limit. Historians write four-hundred page books on specific and nuanced topics, and the French Quarter in the early twentieth century is a very nuanced topic. The movie French Quarter tries to cover the historical origins of jazz, the difficulties of race, and the realities of corruption in an hour and forty minutes of story that defies genre: is it sci-fi? fantasy? comedy? (Frankly, though the stories are dissimilar, its time-travel, parallel-reality approach reminded me a bit of Octavia Butler’s novel Kindred, which was published in 1979.) I can’t tell, after watching this movie, if it would be better or worse to know the basics of the history when you watch it, whether understanding what the movie is trying to convey helped or hurt. Overall – and I’ve written this before about several of the Southern movies – it’s important to remember that this is not a documentary, nor does it purport to be. If somebody were looking for a serious factual account of the time and place, this would definitely not be that. Personally, I took French Quarter as a somewhat hip, quasi-psychedelic, quite loose interpretation of an interesting episode in Southern history, one that added a tremendous amount of gratuitous nudity. But it’s not much more.
