The Intolerable Burden

Despite the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, many Southern schools remained segregated well into the 1960s; this was certainly the case in the quiet delta town of Drew, Mississippi, at least until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forced the white town fathers to send a letter offering "freedom of choice" in schooling to all citizens, in order to receive federal funding. Of course, no one actually expected any black parents to enroll their children in the lily-white schools, but in 1965, Mae Bertha Carter, a diminutive, determined sharecropper's wife did exactly that, and for the next five years eight of her 13 children remained the only black kids in these schools, withstanding isolation, taunts, and attacks, while pursuing an equal education. Filmmaker Chea Prince's excellent documentary combines interviews with the now-adult children (and, most poignantly and eloquently, Mae Bertha in 1999 just before her death), compelling black-and-white archival footage, and additional commentary from other activists, the white school secretary, and fellow white students to limn a powerful portrait of a time mere decades ago when black sharecroppers worked six days a week for no money in conditions hard to distinguish from slavery. "I dreamed that one day we would leave that plantation," Mae Bertha says, which is why she drummed into her children the importance of getting an education. Today, the city of Drew is a stagnant backwater producing many despondent young black men who frequently drop out of school and land in Parchment Penitentiary a few miles to the north; the film makes it clear that Drew is a microcosm for what is happening in many other places--a depressing but realistic ending to an otherwise uplifting film. Highly recommended. Editor's Choice. Aud: H, C, P. (M. Pendergrast)