OUR STORY
During the summer of 2012, Dr. Myers toured 10 southern states, interviewing over 30 farmers, sharecroppers, and gardeners and a 5th generation coil basket weaver.
Several interviews were elders in their late 90's and beyond up to age 113. These interviews represent generations of cultural traditions of Black farming philosophy that honors land, sustainability, God, family and love for their community.
State line: Texas, Arkansas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Tennessee and Florida.
PEOPLE IN THE FILM
Aunt Rose: In 2016, Aunt Rose turned 104 years old. She is daughter of a tenant farmer and maintained her own garden until she was 96 years old.
Icefene Thomas, lived until the age of 113 born December 24, 1902, died January 6, 2016.
Jerry Taylor: Basket weaver that shows how rice plantations in South Carolina used basket weaving in the "fanner basket".
Shirley Sherrod is a former Georgia State Director of Rural Development of the USDA who was forced to resign her post because of unfair charges of racism, who tells the tragic story of her farming father’s murder by a white farmer that inspired her long career of public service.
Deborah Williams, daughter of a Georgia sharecropper, who in 1996 co-founded "The Mother Clyde Memorial West End Garden", the first Atlanta community garden in a trash-strewn vacant lot, now a thriving urban farm where the community can freely pick fruits and vegetables, to each according to need.
Vermont Preston, pictured in the background is the cob oven he made by hand. He tells the story of how to prepare Poke salad, which he grows on his urban farm.
Alvin Steppes:
Played an integral part in Pigford vs. Glickman, the lawsuit against loan discrimination against black farmers.