Tomorrow is the day that Shoun Hill and I have been planning for over the last two years. It is with both anticipation and excitement that tomorrow we premier the Black farmer documentary. We will engage the farmers in a discussion of the film and what the interviewees have brought to the film. We will show half of it tomorrow and the second half on Saturday. What do we expect? I am not sure. Some know it is coming, and some have come just to see it. Others do not know it is coming and will see it as well for the first time.
For those of you who have followed this page, you know that it has been over two years in the works. Shoun, Charla and I have traveled from Texas, to New Jersey, to Maryland, and to DC, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Alabama.
BFAA funded the initial stages of the work, and you, friends, and family funded a very large sum of money for its completion. Without you and BFAA, this project would not have occurred. Along the way, we faced opposition as some farmers or family members did not want to be interviewed, legal counsel for the DOJ rebuffed us, as did legal counsel for PIgford I and a number of others.
Still, we found extraordinary stories from the farmers who prevailed as David against Goliath between 1997 and 1999. The stories brought their pain to surface. Shoun, Charla, and I walked into sacred spaces in hearing their stories and honoring their stories. It is impossible to get every story and every nuance of a story in a documentary of an hour and forty minutes. That has been Shoun's burden. My burden was to negotiate itineraries, times, and places, and whether or not a farmer and family would engage with us.
With each burden came a huge amount of respect for the lived experiences of these brave people. They believed that their cause was just. They believed that they were fighting for themselves and for the movement.
Therein lies the burden and the challenge for Shoun and me. We believe in their stories. We believe in the movement that they started. We believe that justice is still being denied.
It is for the cause of justice that we have made this documentary.
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