I had a chance to review a documentary by Marco Williams, Banished (2007) for Teaching Sociology. This is a version of that review. Those of us who teach race and ethnic relations routinely encounter difficulty explaining to our students the causes of the present conditions of black Americans, for example, why blacks are more likely to live in poverty than whites. As sociologists, we teach what the evidence and our theories tell us, namely that the situation of black America is the result of a dynamic process of cumulative disadvantages emplaced by white supremacy and perpetuated by the inertia of history. We typically deliver this information as texts, charts, and statistics, abstract forms of knowledge that our students often find difficult to process. Sociologists want for methods of presenting material that connect with our students’ lay understandings, strategies that make the subject matter live for them.
Banished is a smart and engaging film about racial cleansing in the United States that brings the sociology of racism to life for the lay person. Banished traces the outline of racial terrorism: the alleged violation of a young white woman, the lynching of the alleged black perpetrator or perpetrators, the removal of black residents from the community by violent means and the criminal confiscation of their property. Many of the places that experienced racial cleansing, the so-called “sunset towns,” remain, often proudly, all-white or virtually all-white communities, with many blacks too uneasy to return to claim what they feel is rightfully theirs, and many more resigned to the belief, reinforced by those in authority, that the moment to bring legal action has long since passed. By emphasizing the intersections of history and biography, Banished exposes students to more than the history of racial violence in a white-dominated social order; students also see how the racialized structure of power perpetuates the state of inequality and the denial of justice shapes the future.
Three white communities focus Williams’ film: Forsyth, Georgia, Pierce City, Missouri, and Harrison, Arkansas. Elliot Jaspin, whose superb Buried in the Bitter Waters (2007) documents these and other cases, appears throughout the documentary. Teachers who use Banished in the classroom might well consider assigning Jaspin’s book as one of the course texts. His research lends the voice of authority to the film, reassuring viewers that the cases Williams selects are not extraordinary, but rather examples of a clear pattern of racial terrorism in American history. Several central questions guide Jaspin’s study and these inform Williams’ documentary: What happened to the people who lived in these communities and their descendants? What happened to their property? How have they made do? How do whites and blacks negotiate yesterday? What can they do today that would make tomorrow different?
Jaspin documents that before whites racially cleansed Forsyth, Georgia in 1912, the black population there numbered 1,098. Within a matter of months, it had dropped to 30. By the 1930 census, there was only one black person living in Forsyth. The county remains almost all-white (fewer than five percent of residents are black). To call attention to this history, black and white civil rights activists organized a march on Forsyth in 1987 on the inauguration of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. White supremacists met the bus carrying the marchers. Reminiscent of the attacks on blacks marching for civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s, whites pelted the Forsyth marchers with rocks and garbage. Fallout from the march compelled the governor of Georgia to organize a bi-racial commission, headed by white attorney Phil Bettis, to study the issue of racial reconciliation. The commission quickly polarized over the issue of whether the community should compensate black families for the loss of their property. The sides never came together. White members of the commission refused to acknowledge that whites had banished blacks from Forsyth. The participants presented their conclusions to the governor in a segregated report.
Williams personalizes the segment by concentrating on the legacy of a man named Morgan Strickland and his descendants’ determination to locate the property he allegedly sold to the white persons whose names appear on the deeds. Leola Strickland Evans, ninety-five at the time of the filming of the documentary in 2005, lived in Forsyth County as a child, her presence debunking the claim that banishment directly affects no living persons. Williams films the Stricklands visiting the family graveyard in Forsyth. They find it littered with the trash of a white family living in a house nearby. After cleaning the graves and planting flowers, the Stricklands travel to city hall to look at the deeds. They find no record of Morgan having legally sold his land.
Williams looks further into the circumstances of how whites came to possess Morgan Strickland’s property. Jaspin documents the dirty truth: Strickland had not sold his property; whites, using the legal technique of adverse possession, stole it. After driving blacks from Forsyth, whites needed to occupy the land for only seven years, after which time title attorneys granted them legal title to it. Williams arranges a meeting between Jaspin and Phil Bettis to discuss the matter. Bettis is a title attorney involved in passing black property to generations of white families. This is the same Phil Bettis who had headed the governor’s failed bi-racial commission back in 1987. Their encounter produces one of the more compelling moments in the film, as Bettis, refusing to accept any responsibility for a crime affecting generations of Stricklands, takes strong exception to Jaspin’s characterization of banishment in Forsyth as racial cleansing. (This is not the first time Jaspin has run into opposition to the phrase. In Buried in the Bitter Waters, he recounts a fight with his own editors at Cox Newspapers over the use of the term.) Proving the truism that justice delayed is justice denied, viewers are witness to the argument that it is too late for the Stricklands to recover their loss. They did not seek redress in a timely manner. Yet, how could they when trying would likely have put their lives in jeopardy?
The other case studies are equally powerful. Two descendants of James Cobb, Charles Brown, Jr. and his brother James, travel to Pierce City, Missouri to bring their great grandfather’s body back to Springfield. Whites banished the Cobb family in 1901 and James lay in an unmarked grave, unmarked because white residents had removed the stone. The story Williams tells revolves around the relationship between the white coroner and Cobb’s descendants. After relocating the body, Charles inquires about the price. The coroner takes Charles aside and many watching will likely expect, as did I, the relocation will be a gift to Charles and James, an act of racial healing. It seems that the moment has moved the coroner’s sympathies. Then he quotes a price. Charles informs the coroner that he has written a letter to Pierce City asking the city to cover the cost. Later we discover that the city refuses to pay the coroner’s bill. No amount of money can heal such a hurt, the coroner tells Williams. Yet the whites in Pierce City, despite the fact that the government failed to protect its lack citizens and failed to protect the chain of custody, are unwilling to produce a meager sum of money to satisfy the coroner (Charles pays the coroner himself). Just as in Forsyth County, when money becomes an issue, there is always a reason why whites should not have to pay. The implication is that blacks are unreasonable for asking.
Residents of Harrison, Arkansas divide between those who desire racial reconciliation and those who love Harrison because it is white. Williams meets with Thom Robb, a leader of the Ku Klux Klan residing in Harrison. Williams asks Robb how he would feel if he built a house on the vacant lot next to Robb’s. Robb says he would be displeased because he has a culture and a heritage to preserve. The degree of civility shown towards Williams by Robb and the matter of fact way Robb articulates his racism is chilling. Viewers will find fascinating the brief debate, held in front of a basement shrine Robb has constructed from photographs of Klan rallies, about whether one lights a cross to celebrate European culture or burns a cross to intimidate black people. Accepting a challenge from Robb, Williams speaks with community members who tell him that they came to Harrison because they want to live in a community without black people.
Sociologists should find Banished, especially accompanied by Elliot Jaspin’s Buried in the Bitter Waters, a useful addition to their courses covering the subject of race and ethnic inequality. Williams’ penetrating work provides students, in a readily-accessible format, information about a heretofore little-known aspect of racism in America, one that unlocks a greater understanding of the black-white inequality dynamic. The images, interviews, and commentary concern not only documenting the tyranny of the pervasive white supremacy that represents a defining characteristic of American civilization, but also illustrate C. Wright Mills’ argument concerning the connection between public issues and personal troubles. The documentary is moreover useful for demonstrating the contrasting logics of the “perpetrator” and “victim” perspectives, a foundational argument in critical race theory. In this view, the fact that the demand that a legitimate grievance must involve a living perpetrator who acted intentionally to harm a person or persons (the perpetrator’s perspective) trumps the argument that those who benefit from the crime of others have a responsibility to make whole the injured party (the victim’s perspective) reflects the prevailing structure of racialized power in the United States.
Some students may take issue with Williams’ standpoint in the documentary. Yet, their perception likely reveals more about their politics than those of the director. For the most part, Williams strives to leave the conclusions to viewers. Indeed, given the things that happen in the film, many will admire his restraint. I am not one of them, however. I expect from the documentary format persuasive efforts that either leave viewers with compelling arguments to use in political debate or clear positions about which to develop stronger critiques. At any rate, Banished will no doubt provoke spirited discussion among students about the obligations of the white community and the responsibility of local and national governments to do more than address racism in America merely by acknowledging it, but also by organizing concrete action that fundamentally changes the dynamic of cumulative disadvantage.
freedom and reason 