100 Years From Mississippi
- Directed by: Tarabu Betserai Kirkland
- Released: 2022 (educational)
- Year of Production: 2020
More about the film
Mamie Lang Kirkland was seven years old when she fled Ellisville, Mississippi in 1915 with her mother and siblings as her father and his friend, John Hartfield, escaped an approaching lynch mob. John Hartfield returned to Mississippi in 1919 and was killed in one of the most horrific lynchings of the era.
Mamie’s son, Tarabu, had grown up hearing stories of John Hartfield but didn’t know if his mother’s stories were fact or folklore until one day in 2015. Tarabu discovered an article describing Hartfield’s murder before a crowd of 10,000 spectators. At that moment, the film was born.
Mamie had vowed for a century that she would never return to Mississippi. Yet with Tarabu’s remarkable find, he urged his mother to finally confront her childhood trauma by returning to Ellisville. Mamie was 107 when they began the journey to connect her story to the larger impact of America’s legacy of racial violence, which echoes today from Ferguson to New York, Atlanta to Los Angeles. Like many of the six million African Americans who left the Deep South, Mamie’s story is a testament to the courage and hope of her generation. Her indomitable will and contagious joy of living are exceeded only by her ability to tell her story now 111 years later. In a time of great social divisions, ‘100 Years From Mississippi’ gives us the simple wisdom of an ordinary woman’s extraordinary life.
Tarabu is the last of Mamie Kirkland’s nine children and has been developing the “One Hundred Years From Mississippi” project for the last several years.
Tarabu hails from Buffalo, New York, and resides in Los Angeles, CA.
Tarabu’s background as a Media Artist, Producer, and Administrator includes twenty years in Public Radio having served as General Manager of radio station KPFK-FM in Los Angeles, Assistant Manager of KPFA in Berkeley where he co-founded the Third World Media Department and helped establish national radio training programs for producers of color, and General Manager of the Community Information Network.
He is also the author and composer of the musical “Jukebox” which starred Danny Glover, author and producer of the stage play “Ritual of a Bop Solo,” producer of the stage play “Jungle Bells,” and producer and musical co-director for the National Public Radio drama “Quiet Thunder,” and has been the writer and producer for numerous radio documentary projects and video industrials.
In addition, Tarabu has worked in the cultural and social service sector as the Director of Programs at A Place Called Home, Managing Director of Great Leap, Inc., and Managing Director of the Black Theatre Artists Workshop.
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