Inspired and Inspiring

I have followed Jerry Mitchell's work for a long time. In fact, I cannot remember not following him, frankly.  So, it was prior to his speech on the ACU campus several years ago that holds marker status in my memory. He presented to the audience which included my wife and me, the cases he was investigating and the challenges that he was experiencing. He was inspired and inspiring then. We talked briefly about Black farmers and what interest I could encourage him to take in them, but, alas, he needed to keep his focus on Mississippi although he did help investigate the horrors of the children murdered at the church in Birmingham.

It has been with much interest that I followed his efforts on Facebook. Maybe you follow him, too, as he writes what each day in history covers. He has a wealth of knowledge at his fingertips.

Then, he published his book, "Race Against Time: A Reporter Reopens the Unsolved Murder Cases of the Civil Rights Era." It was difficult not to go out on Amazon and buy it immediately, but I wanted to purchase it from whatever bookstore he was going to be visiting and talking about the book and his experiences. That was a bookstore in Dallas just a few weeks back.

He contextualizes historically each story for the reader and then he dives into the processes and the content of each case. Per a recent email from him, he recorded one long conversation with a later to be convicted murder, and then he depended on his notes, court documents, and others for the engaging conversations he had with people, all manner of people, judges, attorneys, investigators, police, FBI agents, witnesses, and those who were eventually convicted. The book was a "keep reading it until you're finished" sort of a book.

I think he was inspired and inspiring. I do not say those words lightly.

As he chronicled the years in which he worked on various cases, as he talked to people, and as the cases and the conversations at times consumed him, and as he experienced the ups and the downs emotionally, I was naturally drawn to parallels.

While his is about investigating criminal cases that were essentially cold cases, mine was that of gathering stories of Black farmers who were marginalized by the USDA, DOJ, and their communities. I resonate with Jerry in terms of the length of time when crimes were committed and when justice finally prevailed. I resonate with Jerry in terms of how the wheels of justice grind slowly and sometimes people die. I resonate with Jerry in terms of how some of the guilty get off totally free of having to pay for their crimes.

I find inspiration to keep on.  From 1994 to now has been a long time, some twenty-six years.  Some of those I've met along the way have gone on to meet their Maker. Some are suffering with their elder years and challenges that have come.  Some wear the scars in their bodies and their souls from the struggle for justice. They trusted me with their stories.

Their stories are sacred spaces and places. Their invitation into those stories was a sacred invitation. Walking into a mediation hearing in 1997 was a new world of power and dominance as I saw the machinations of injustice place more burdens upon the lives of the farmer and his wife. I saw attorneys do what attorneys do when the federal government is their client. I saw attorneys do when Black farmers are their clients. It was a war. Yes, it was a war.

Yes, there have been a couple of peer-reviewed articles, numerous presentations both solo and with students from ACU, affiliation with BFAA, and now the documentary. All have fueled my desire to do more, even to see change happen at the USDA, even to the point of helping two Democratic candidates for the presidency shape their policies for such a thing.

Over the last two years of gathering stories, connecting with people I'd known before and with people I had only heard or read about, and sitting before them with camera rolling, was at times a gut-wrenching experience.  I was asking them, with Shoun watching via the lense of his camera, to rehearse painful memories of those stories. What right did I have to do that? With whose permission did we do that?

Now, we are finishing up things on the film. We have several places which are waiting for us to screen it with them. That will mean showing it and then discussing it. Maybe we can have farmers with us.  After all, it is their story that we are telling.

Jerry Mitchell has inspired me to keep going, keep gathering stories, keep "investigating" so to speak, and eventually in multiple settings and in multiple ways, tell those stories of justice denied and justice found. Certainly the farmers inspire me. Ues, they certainly do.  Trust can be an inspirational thing.

At the end of the book, Jerry honors "the One" who gave him strength and guidance in the telling of those stories.  I am inspired that he would honor God in such a way.