Banished

Banished: How Whites Drove Blacks Out of Town in America

A film by Marco Williams

The movie starts naming different time periods and counties in Midwestern and Southern states in which African Americans were driven out with violent force. All of the situations were similar.  Each began with the death of a white woman, then the lynching of a black man and ending with the expulsion of the black community from the area. Due to this, many of these counties today remain all white communities. Banished is the story of three of those communities struggling to reconcile their past with their present

Seeing the news articles of African Americans being run out of different counties of America because they feared for their lives was simply awful. I definitely didn’t learn about that in American History. Elliot Jaspin, a reporter for Cox newspapers, talked about how they were so fearful that many didn’t have time to even sell their land.  They were too scared to even come back, so their land was lost. Jaspin asked the question, “What happened to those African Americans and the land that they lost?” According to Jaspin this is the largest racial cleansing in the history of America of which he is aware.  However, no recompense has come from the government to acknowledge this terrible time in American history.

The first county Williams visited was Forsyth County, Georgia. Forsyth is a growing suburb in Atlanta and is the county where the greatest number of blacks were expelled. In 1912 there were 1089 blacks and in a matter of months the population dropped to only 30. Watching the video of the Brotherly March in 1987 with seven white supremacy organizations who wanted to keep Forsyth an all white county was shockingly horrible and yet inspiring.  Members of the supremacy organizations were yelling and throwing things at the black and white marchers and yet through all, they continued to march. The descendants of those who were violently removed from Forsyth asked wonderful questions such as, “Why and who has the right to tell any man or woman that he or she can not live here?”  “Don’t they owe us the land?” “Can we at least get the land back?” “Who should be held responsible for the stolen land?” However, it’s not that easy after a hundred years since the land has been sold and resold many times. Sherrilyn Ifill said, “The loss of land is devastating for the African American community because it’s something that one cannot be recovered easily.”  

The next city visited by Williams was Pierce City, Missouri. The main story follows a man named Charles trying to exhume his great grandfather’s body to move it from Pierce City to Springfield because his family’s banishment in the 1900s. “If Pierce City would work with me on this, it would go a long way to show that Pierce City has changed.” When it came to the people currently living in Pierce City, it was obvious they didn’t want the responsibility for their history. It was a black spot on their history that they just wanted to forget. One woman said, “You won’t ever see a colored person in Pierce City.” Another woman actually had the hardest time coming up with another word for African Americans other than the “N” word. It was definitely a different world than I’m used to.  

The last city Williams visited was Harrison, Arkansas. A community that banished it black citizens not only once but twice.  Because of its reputation for being hostile towards blacks the town has formed a task force on race relations. They are working to change and reconcile what happen in the past. They are starting by accepting and taking responsibility for what happened and then trying to in some ways to fix it. However, there are still those who don’t agree with the task force, such as the KKK. Williams also sits down with a retiree and asks him why he moved to Harrison, he straight up says, “low cost of living and more importantly than anything else is lack of blacks.” I was literally in shock when he said that. However, I loved how calm and collected Williams was, he just sits there and lets these intolerant people say what they want.

Overall, through Williams’ use of direct address both embodied through interviews and disembodied through the voice of god narration by Williams. There is a clear argument within the documentary, however, Williams does a good job of giving both sides of the argument. Also Williams’ use of a hybrid mode using both expository and participatory gives you a sense of the people within the documentary but also about Williams. Bottom line, many people think racial issues are just simply history. However, this film makes you realize that racial issues are still very much a part of our history today and there is still room for growth, change, and most importantly recompense. Williams puts it perfectly when he says, “This is the lingering legacy of the explosion of blacks, we remain invisible.”