User Reviews

This is documentary about one woman's investigation into the racial violence in a small town near Pensacola Florida which started with the lynching of a black man in 1908 for the murder of a white woman in her family. Later, she heard that over the next 30 years, many black men were brutally murdered for just walking down the wrong road.

The filmmaker now lives in New York but returned to her town to investigate. She spoke to old people, both black and white, who still remembered and she eventually convinced the police to dig in a area where the bodies were supposedly buried. Her perseverance was unwavering and even though the results were inconclusive, it brings back a painful time in Southern history which never quite makes it into the history books. These were real people she interviewed and the truths she unveiled had a definite emotional impact on me. This is a story that needs to be told. And she told it well.

I saw this film at The Tribeca Film Festival and after the showing there was a spirited audience discussion with the filmmaker and the director which was just as moving and revealing as the film. I feel I have now been changed in some small way as I am aware of what went on in my own country on a whole different level. I am so glad that this film is getting exposure. I certainly think it deserves national attention, not only for its message, but in the way it was put together to unfold this shocking story.

Recommended

This documentary premiered last night at the 2007 Tribeca Film Festival. It would not compare favorably with documentaries usually seen on public television. The story focuses on a notorious murder and subsequent lynching of the accused as follows: (1) a Black man named Leander Shaw was accused of murdering and raping a white woman, Lillie Brewton, in 1908 in or near Pensacola, Florida; and (2) Shaw was dragged from police custody and lynched in the center of town. The film follows with its main argument, that as a result of the Brewton murder, a six decade campaign of terror -- lynching -- against Blacks ensued.

Unfortunately, the re-enactment of the Brewton killing, though compelling, was followed by (1) bromidal narratives of subsequent events, and (2) an unsuccessful (and, for viewers, tedious) forensic search for remains of lynching victims (including extensive use of cadaver dogs). As for the former, testimonies of Blacks who knew one suspected lynching victim named Wiley (killed in 1961) and that of a suspected conspirator in the Wiley murder, are so devoid of factual information as to diminish viewer interest generated by the earlier, able, re-enactment of the underlying crime and the Shaw lynching. For example, the narratives from Blacks about the 1961 killing are from people who recalled the murder and knew the victim, but were not close enough to particulars indicating guilt to offer more than hearsay statements about rumors and suspicions surrounding the incident. Also, Joe Petty, a great nephew of Lillie Brewton and alleged confederate in the 1961 lynching, who speaks candidly about the lynchings in general and even describes where victims were buried, unsurprisingly denied any involvement in the 1961 murder. Also, the film naively implies sophisticated viewers should be shocked that whites in Pensacola are angered and in denial about the lynching allegations.

The catalyst for this documentary, Alice Brewton Hurwitz, who lives in New York and is a great-niece of Lillie Brewton, emphasized her duty to expose the lynchings arising from the crime against her great aunt, though it indicts her extended family in the lynchings and, possibly, Lillie Brewton's husband, who some suspected paid Leander Shaw to kill his wife.

Given the unsuccessful forensic search for lynching victims and the impossibility of prosecutions, it would have been better to tell this story as a work of fiction. Hurwitz discussed this point after the film, but reiterated her commitment to documentary as -- in her view -- a superior vehicle. However, in her eagerness to tell her story, she and the film's other principals forget that a documentary is about examination of facts, and (given the dearth of forensic evidence and the passage of time) those surrounding the alleged lynchings resulting from the Lillie Brewton murder are very few.