Holding up a mirror to history

Hey there,

History is anything but pure fact. The story we tell (or don’t tell) about the past is inevitably tinted with the hues of our own time.

The documentary tells the story of a small city in Mississippi, and the tension between its proud renown as a living monument to antebellum opulence and the root of its wealth – slavery. ~ ‘Antebellum’ refers to the pre-civil war era in the US ~

Opinions on the city’s history are divided, but there’s one thing about Natchez everyone agrees on: its beauty. This shines through in the film, which at times feels like a fever dream. Natchez sits on a bluff along one of the many snaking bends of the Mississippi, and we see steam boats tootling out olde tunes on their calliopes as they drop tourists into the city’s port. Visitors wander along quaint streets lined with blooming crepe myrtle trees. Meandering drives lead to grand houses where the current generation of owners – dressed as belles in hooped skirts – coo greetings and offer southern hospitality. Behind the towering pillars of the Greek revival exteriors, the houses drip with finery.

If it looks at odds with the modern day, that’s because history is the city’s main business. In 1932, in the middle of the Great Depression and a boll weevil infestation, the cotton industry in Mississippi collapsed. The white matriarchs of Natchez — members of the local garden club — opened their plantation manor houses to the public, capitalising on a growing nostalgia for simpler, agrarian times. They named the experience “Pilgrimage”. Almost a century later, the garden club, the antebellum homes and historical tourism remain right at the heart of the local economy.

“All that Natchez has to offer is history,” Tracy ‘Rev’ Collins, a local tour guide who features in the film, told me. “And how that history is presented is where you come into some challenges, frankly, with the tourism engine that operates in the city today.”

Rev – he’s also a pastor – wonders whether there is a reluctance to tell the “whole story” of the town. The history that he tells includes the thousands of people sold into labour at Natchez’s slave market (at one time, the second-largest in the US), chained at their wrists, ankles and neck. It includes the women repeatedly assaulted by the men who enslaved them, and the long shadow of 90 years of systemic racism enshrined in the law.

The difference in opinion on what, exactly, should be part of the “whole” story was apparent just in talking to people for this newsletter.

The film captures a tense conversation between two of the women who own plantation-era homes. One, Debbie, gives visitors a frank description of the conditions faced by the people who used to live in the house, which was formerly slave quarters. The other woman seems to show a quiet but pointed resistance to Debbie’s methods.

Then there’s the very human anguish of a man trying his best to explain why wearing Confederacy-era military uniform has (mostly) fallen out of fashion, tying himself in knots as he starts his explanation over and over (“How do I say this right?... Sorry… I’m going to get in trouble here”) before his efforts collapse into a frustrated sigh and an eye-roll.

Suzannah is herself from the south, growing up about five hours north of Natchez in Memphis, Tennessee. But at a screening of the film at the Tribeca film festival in New York, Suzannah explained that what the documentary shows isn’t a Natchez problem, or a southern states problem; it’s an American problem.

(Incidentally, at Tribeca the film won prizes for best documentary feature, cinematography and editing.)

I was struck by Suzannah and her team’s bold plan to use the film to hold a mirror up to this American problem. They plan to take the film to historic sites that are grappling with similar issues, as well as to other garden clubs like the one in Natchez around the US.

“I made this film because I didn’t want to preach to the choir,” Suzannah told me. She hopes that showing the film to garden clubs will mean it reaches people who wouldn’t typically see a documentary like this.

In Natchez she held a community screening in front of a packed house of 300 people. “I think there were people that felt extremely seen by the film,” Suzannah said. She talked hopefully about one garden club leader approaching her after the film, earnestly expressing a desire to want to do better in telling the full stories of their houses, but needing help to do so.

But Suzannah’s also comfortable with the fact that others didn’t like the film. “I didn’t make it to elicit one reaction.”

Most of all, she hopes the film sparks self reflection and opens up conversation. “We’re all complicit in maintaining systems of oppression. I hope that the film chips away at the inequality that’s present in the stories we tell in this country and how that affects our everyday lives.”

Suzannah, Rev and many others believe that confronting the difficulties of America’s past is the only way of building a more equitable future.

“I truly believe that if you don’t understand your history, you just keep repeating the same mistakes as before,” said Rev.

“They call people living their whole lives in Natchez ‘Natchezians’, and they call people like me, who move to town, ‘Natchoozians’ – because we choose to be there. I kind of love that. So, I’m just a Natchoozian telling you all the things I love about Natchez.

It is the warmest place. People say, ‘Oh, well, southern hospitality,’ but I grew up on the Louisiana border in the south. This is different.

It's like going back to the 50s in the good ways of people caring about people and waving to your neighbours and knowing the names of everyone who lives there.

And if you love history, which I do, you walk down the street and you're just covered by it, by a sense of it. Natchez is American history. It is the oldest town on the Mississippi River, two years older than New Orleans.

People lived full lives here – people had struggles here, people had no freedom here, people had some freedom here. And I wonder what that looked like. And to me, sometimes asking questions is about the best we can do.

~ Tammy and her husband saw the film at the Tribeca film festival in New York ~ You know, it’s really nerve wracking. I think it probably took us 15 minutes to let go of the grip of our chair. We weren’t afraid of how we would look but we were concerned, and I think the whole town is: ‘How will they make our sweet little town look?’

So, do I think it shows it evenly? No. Do I understand why? Yeah. They’ve got to have a story, they’ve got to draw people in. No one’s gonna watch all of us doing our very best to tell the truth, going about our ordinary lives.

~ Tammy says that while the film has drawn some strong reactions in Natchez, it felt very different watching it in New York ~

People from Natchez have, I know, felt attacked over the years. I try to be sensitive to their feelings – my great grandmother wasn’t there, trying to build something that now they feel is under attack.

But in a room of strangers with my husband, we weren’t feeling judged. We were feeling that we were in a safe place where people were viewing individuals as individuals, not as ‘This town is bad, this town is good’. There’s good, there’s bad, just like in life.

I looked around and I felt openness in the faces of those around me. There was a lot of kindness in the room. After the screening and the Q&A, we poured out onto the street with men and women of different colours and ages, and we continued a dialogue.

My fear is that being fearful of saying or doing anything ‘wrong’ is going to cause us all to be fearful to have meaningful conversation. And I don’t think that's where this film is intended to go. It’s to improve everyone’s lives and to have dialogue.

I hope that the positive impact of the film is that people that have not yet heard of Natchez hear of it and come, because all we’ve got to do is get them there. This place is special. So even though we have struggles, I believe in the goodness of people and I believe in the goodness of Natchez.”

Natchez will go on US-wide theatrical release from February of next year, with a broadcast spot secured for later in the year – and Suzannah hopes there will be more screenings in the UK. I’ll keep you updated if there are.  

I really enjoyed learning about Natchez and I hope you did too. Here at The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, we really believe in powerful stories that connect communities and inform our readers. If you’d like to support us, then please do so here:

That’s it for this week!