David W Seiberling
As I white southern man, this film had a lot of hard truths in it. But everyone should see it! Booker was by all accounts the nicest person you could ever hope to meet, and what happened to him and why is a shame, in every possible definitions of the word. I felt shame, as a southerner, as a American, and as a human-being, that this kind of injustices could happen in such recent history(1960s). Watch this film, if you have the guts to face the truth about racism in the south! the sad fact is that Booker had to die, because the people of Mississippi couldn't stand the shame of him telling the truth to the world. so as usually happens they tried to cover-up Sin with Sin. God bless Booker Wright!
Marta
The only other review on the IMDb for "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story", gave this documentary a bad review. That review is wrong. While this might not have been the best documentary I've ever seen it is a must-see film for its content, which is brutal and eye opening. In 1965 Frank de Felitta, who made films for NBC, went to Greenwood, MS to see if the Civil Rights movement had had any impact on the deep South. In the original film Booker Wright is shown discussing how he makes it through his day, and how he had hope for his children but not for himself. It was broadcast once or twice in 1965, then never shown again. The granddaughter of Booker Wright, Yvette Johnson, went looking for the original film, and some answers on her grandfather and his activism. Raymond de Felitta, Frank's son, contacted her. They worked on this documentary to bring Booker's story to a wider audience. A lot of that original film makes its way into this new documentary. The footage of KKK members talking to crowds of whites in Greenwood in the early 1960s, all about how they're being subjugated and put down by all the other races, are disgusting and disturbing. The footage of Greenwood, MS town leaders, and of course they're all white, talking about how much they love their black people and are not racist, is chilling. Every one of the guys around the table, including the mayor, look like they just came from the KKK rally, and act like it. They all have dead eyes with no feeling in them. What this film does is show how hard it was to be a black person in Mississippi after slavery was abolished and keep your dignity and your life. It showed in a lot of ways black people were still kept in slavery. And, that while things have changed a bit, they didn't change nearly enough in the South and elsewhere. Black men here talk about their lives being of value, yet there is no evidence that the whites in the town, beyond a few, thought that. This is is still a problem 50 years later in the US. The man of the title, Booker Wright, was a hero who lived his life under this regime. He was a successful business owner who went on- camera for the 1965 NBC film to talk about his life and how he lived it. He was targeted for that, harassed, pistol-whipped, and eventually murdered in a shady fashion by another black who might have been ordered to kill Booker by local police. What you get at the end is that to the whites of Greenwood, MS, and probably in a lot of other towns, black life had no value to them unless they could control it. Again, a lot of things haven't changed. We must all work to get them changed. Demand transparency from your local police department; organize a peaceful protest of any act of brutality by them and keep protesting until you're successful in changing their actions. And watch this documentary.
MartinHafer
Frank De FelittaBack in the mid-1960s, during the height of racial tensions in the US South, Frank De Felitta made a documentary in which locals were interviewed. For the most part, black people were afraid and said little to argue with the local party line--that blacks and whites love each other and that everyone LOVES the status quo. However, one of the blacks folks they interviewed was famous for his ingratiating ways around white customers but he'd had enough. Mr. Booker told what he REALLY thought--and as a result, he soon ended up in the hospital and his life was ruined.Doing a film where they talk about Booker's story is a great idea-- even if it is basically just rehashing the old documentary. Putting it in context with the civil rights movement, the KKK and the like COULD have made for a wonderful film. Instead, however, the film was horribly made. Too often the subject matter deviated very far from the original film. Or, even worse, they simply kept restating the same things again and again and again. It also was extremely disjoint, overlong and just sloppy. The bottom line is that there have been a lot of wonderful films about this sort of subject matter (especially many of the episodes of the PBS series "American Experience"). Booker and his story would have been a great inclusion into a much larger and more coherent film.
