Cotton, Capitalism and the documentary," LaLee's Kin"

The second principle of Capitalism is to control wages, salaries and benefits. One cannot plunder if labor costs are steadily rising — and plunder is a consequence of capitalism. It’s just who get to do the plundering.

With this in mind, we plunge into the documentary, LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton. I watched it thinking: “Man, what great archival footage they have of Mississippi in the 1930s.” 

LaLee’s Kin: The Legacy of Cotton, made by the great Albert Maysles is stunning filmmaking. The first time I watched the picture I came in about 1/3 of the way through. Naively, I thought the film a historical piece about Mississippi sharecropping-- circa 1940s. I dropped my coffee cup on the living room floor upon realizing this was from 2001.

The story follows LaLee Wallace, a 62-year old grandmother living in West Tallahatchie County, one the poorest areas in the U.S.

Sharecropping. Still.

After reconstruction, there was a halcyon period where blacks had some political power. To say it was short-lived, is an understatement. The rise of the KKK and black codes hastened the demise. As the ‘Negro’ of the late 18th century came to realize that political power was D.O.A., they turned to the labor unions. In the South, ‘Negroes’ were excluded from unions because of race. Although, in some instances, brickmasons, plasterers, painters and carpenters founded their own unions.

Booker T. Washington believed ‘skilled labor’ was the future for race. For every one lawyer or doctor, there were hundreds of jobs for skilled, trained blacks.  This, he believed, is where advancement of the race held its best opportunity.
 

In the manufacturing North, advancement was also tough. 'Negroes' learned trade and serve apprenticeships but there were no unions to accept them, no great industrial class willing to employ them and no banks to make business loans to sustain or support them in forming their own enterprises.

In the best Orwellian dialectic, we seek to eradicate a robust discussion of slavery from U.S. History--or, at least dilute it. There is a symbiotic relationships between cotton, slavery and the disenfranchisement of black persons in America. I am not saying there is anything that can be done about today--but, it must be acknowledged.

Mississippi has a dark and desolate past—a placed haunted by the ghosts of senseless murders, lynching and sadness. There are no lynchings and murder in LaLee’s Kin, but there’s a lot of sadness. What happened to LaLee’s ‘American dream?'

How did she end up living a sharecropper’s life in 2001 that was thematically identical to a sharecropper’s life in 1901? Surely, this can’t be what Booker T. Washington had in mind when he advocated for the 'Negro' to be content in his or her position.

LaLee’s Kin – to a U.S. audience—causes people to ask: “Is this really the United States?” Well, it is—for many people. The stardust left by the American dream is sawdust for those who live in poverty.

We can never face the long term impact of our history until we face the impact of slavery and cotton. LaLee Kin is a movie that accomplishes that.