Press

ALBANY, NY -- The legacy of African-American farming and the unique reasons for its demise are the subject of a PBS documentary that will be shown Sun., March 4, 2001, at the New York State Museum.

Homecoming ... Sometimes I am Haunted by Memories of Red Dirt and Clay, a 60-minute film that aired on 11 public television stations last year, will be presented at 2 p.m. in the Clarke Auditorium. The screening will be followed by a question and answer period from the filmmaker, Charlene Gilbert, and Albany-based photographer Vickie Smith, who participated in the project.

Homecoming uses the story of Gilbert's family, who grew cotton and vegetables in Montezuma, Ga., to tell the story of black agriculture in the south from the Civil War.
By 1920, there were nearly one million black farmers in American, a number that dropped
to fewer than 18,000 by the end of the century. While those figures parallel the decline of farming nationwide, Homecoming points out how racist practices played out for black growers.

"Understanding the government-supported and legal ways in which black people lost land is really important,'' said Smith, an African-American whose family farmed in Virginia. "When black farmers took their crops to market they got less money for them, making life even harder and exacerbating their level of poverty."

The film, narrated by Charles S. Dutton, joins the growing literature on the topic.

Homecoming features archival footage of farms and the voices of Malcolm X and Julian Bond. Also included are excerpts from the testimony of freed slaves who went on to farm. The film, produced for the Independent Television Service, has won many awards including Best Documentary by the Prized Pieces International Film and Video Festival.

A companion book by the same name will be for sale after the screening.

Gilbert is an independent filmmaker living in Cambridge, Mass., where she is a Bunting Fellow at Harvard University. She received her B.A. from Yale University and her M.F.A. from Temple University. Her works have been shown at national and international festivals. Smith took still photographs for both the film and book.

More information on the film and the topic is available at www.itvs.org/homecoming

NYSM