The Harvest Screening
November 1 @ 10:00 am – 2:00 pm CDT
Community members are invited to attend a special screening of the PBS American Experience documentary The Harvest on Saturday, November 1, from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. at The Ned, 314 E Main St, Jackson, TN 38301. This powerful film, directed by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Douglas A. Blackmon, explores how school integration transformed his hometown of Leland, Mississippi. Beginning in 1969, when federal courts ordered Mississippi schools to fully desegregate, Blackmon and his classmates became part of the first generation of black and white children in Leland to attend all twelve grades together. The documentary tells the extraordinary story of how that first class became possible, then traces the lives of Blackmon and his classmates, teachers, and parents from the first day through high school graduation in 1982.
Set against the backdrop of sweeping social and demographic change, The Harvest is both a riveting portrait of how those children’s lives were transformed and how the town — and America — were changed. But as the film follows the lives of those children into the present, it is also a portrait of what our society has lost in its failure to finish the work begun a generation ago. Watch the official trailer: PBS Trailer
This screening of The Harvest is supported by Georgia Humanities with funding from the Wilbur and Hilda Glenn Family Foundation, in collaboration with Humanities Tennessee and the Weakley County Reconciliation Project, the Jackson Equity Project, and the Lynching Sites Project of Memphis, with the United Way of West TN serving as the local fiscal agent. Following the film, a panel of residents will share their experiences of school integration here in West Tennessee.
