The Margaret Walker Center will present the documentary film “Yazoo Revisited: Integration and Segregation in a Deep Southern Town” at Jackson State University in the Student Center Theater at 11:30 a.m. Wednesday.
Filmed by David Rae Morris, the documentary examines the history of race relations and the 1970 integration of the public schools in Yazoo City, Miss., the hometown of the late author Willie Morris, the filmmaker’s father.
According to Dr. Robert Luckett, Walker Center director, the integration of the public schools in Yazoo City were considered by many to be a model of success for many years, unlike many districts, where white families fled the public schools for newly formed private academies.
The elder Morris graduated from Yazoo City High School in 1952, and attended the University of Texas. After a Rhodes Scholarship, he ended up in New York City and, in 1967, was named the youngest editor-in-chief of Harpers.
He wrote extensively about growing up as a young white man in Mississippi in the 1940s and 1950s, Luckett said. His 1967 memoir, North Toward Home, as well as his 1971 book, Yazoo: Integration in a Deep Southern Town, based on his coverage of the desegregation of the schools in his hometown, are both still in print. He went on to write The Courting of Marcus Dupree (1983), New York Days (1993), and My Dog Skip (1995).
David Rae Morris is a photographer and filmmaker based in New Orleans and Athens, Ohio. His photographs are in many private and public collections, including the permanent collections of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Louisiana State Museum in New Orleans, and the Mississippi Museum of Art in Jackson, Luckett said.
His first film, “Drawing on a Dream,” (with Susan Liles) won third place at the 2013 Elgin (Illinois) Short Film Festival. His second film, “Integrating Ole Miss: James Meredith and Beyond,” was shown on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and won a Telly Award and a Special Recognition Award from the Mississippi Humanities Council.
The screening is sponsored by the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State, the Mississippi Humanities Council, and the Mississippi Film and Video Alliance.
The program is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact: Luckett at robert.luckett@jsums.edu or 601-979-2055.