Taking a closer look at our history

Wed, 19 Dec 2018 20:20:00 -0800

By Rachel Flora

THANKS TO the erasure of African-American history, it can be easy to forget the fact that the civil rights movement happened in some of our lifetimes and that the people we read about in history books are not that distant of relatives to living people.

“For me, it was my aunts and uncles!” says the Beach Institute’s Alicia Scott. “It’s easier to want to forget about it, but we’re talking about it. We’re trying to shed a light on a culture that has created a massive system of disparate treatment.”

One way the Beach Institute is shining that light is through its screening of “The American South As We Know It,” a documentary by Frederick D. Murphy.

Murphy is the founder of History Before Us, a project that preserves influential history. As part of that project, he traveled around the Southeast interviewing people who had survived the Jim Crow era, which inspired him to begin filming the documentary.

In the film, they’re interviewing people who talk about what it was like growing up in the segregated South,” says Scott. “As children, they actually witnessed the KKK and racism.”

As most know, racism is by no means over, and its effects are still seen today.

“There are parts of Alabama that they say are worse than a third-world country,” says Scott. “The UN has come in and condemned these rural areas where there’s raw sewage, no plumbing. We talk badly about other countries, but there are rural parts of the South where, because of the disparity and the greed of the local government, these people live in almost the same conditions as slavery.”

“The American South As We Know It” shows those silos of Southern inequity in a thoughtful way. The film is making its way down the coast, showing in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Charleston before...Read More

King-Tisdell Cottage Foundation | The Beach Institute & King-Tisdell Cottage – Savannah, GA Museums

Taking a closer look at our history