Watching “The Harvest” from American Experience on PBS
Released in late 2023, the PBS documentary The Harvest: Integrating Mississippi’s Schools shares a story based in Leland, Mississippi. Located between Greenville and Indianola, the small Delta town of only a few thousand faced the same scenario as many towns like it in the late 1960s and early 1970s: how to meet Supreme Court’s mandates in the Brown and Swann rulings.
One notable aspect of this town’s history, which led to the documentary, is that Pulitzer Prize -winning journalist and historian Doug Blackmon was one among the class of students who integrated the local elementary school, starting the first grade in 1970. Though Blackmon’s family moved away when he was in high school, most of that class graduated in 1982 after attending all twelve years together. The documentary contains interviews with some of those students, as well as a few teachers, both black and white. It also includes a discussion of the local segregation academy and its effects on the community. The whole thing is tied together by Blackmon’s commentary.
Like all PBS documentaries, it is well done, but the strongest thing about The Harvest is its honesty. This is no good-versus-evil story where the heroes win over the haters. Here, we encounter the naivete of small children who had no idea they were participating in anything unusual, admissions of racial tensions that arose as they grew, and assessments of the re-segregation that followed this relatively brief period. The interview subjects speak with candor about living within an integrated microcosm from 8:00 AM until 3:00 pm, then leaving school to re-enter the social segregation of wider world around town. A few explain how there was pressure among their peers not to cross the color line in day-to-day situations, like playing at recess or visiting one another’s homes. One man in particular, who was a student in the 1970s and early ’80s and who is now a school board member, shares his dismay and disappointment at the state of Leland’s schools in modern times, because they have largely been redivided by race.
As the editor of a project that focuses on the beliefs, myths, and narratives that have shaped the South since 1970, The Harvest was a natural choice for my attention. Many of the common narratives about school integration center on infamous cases, like the Little Rock Nine or James Meredith entering Ole Miss, but the majority of situations in the South were like this one. The daily tensions were ongoing and palpable, but often without severely violent incidents. The men in The Harvest talk about schoolboy fist fights over perceived disrespect, and Blackmon’s own mother, who was a teacher, describes how she had to un-learn her habit of calling her male students “boys” because it offended her new black male students. One woman, who had become a black administrator leading white teachers and students, alluded to tensions with individuals who refused to let change come into their hearts. These are the narratives that add dimension to and flesh out the newly integrated South of the 1970s and ‘80s.
See more documentaries about the South in the On Screen section
Originally published at http://modernsouthernfolklore.com on March 12, 2024.
