Racial Inequality in Schools: Review of the Premiere of “40 Years Later: Now Can We Talk?”

Last Thursday, September 13, Barnard College hosted the premiere of 40 Years Later: Now Can We Talk?, a film directed by Markie Hancock and produced by Lee Anne Bell, the Director of Education as Barnard College. Both of these women, joined by Fern Khan, Monica Miller, and Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz discussed the film and its implications. 40 Years Later is a documentary about South Panola High School in Batesville, Mississippi, and the first black students to be integrated into the historically all-white school. In 2005, black alumni of South Panola were invited to their fortieth high school reunion for the first time, prompting not only this film, but also important interracial dialogue about the experiences of black students who were the first to join white schools. In the film, black and white alumni of the school back for their reunion were prompted by the filmmakers to gather and discuss, both separately and then all together, the effects racial integration had on their high school lives.

The important and often ignored fact that 40 Years Later sheds a powerful light on is the immense difficulties black students faced when they were integrated into white schools. As we know, educational integration never meant mixing black and white schools, but rather, allowing black students to attend higher quality white schools. No white students had to be removed from the comfort of a familiar community and placed into an environment of racial discrimination and harassment, but that is just what these black students went through. In the film, the now middle aged black alumni, who are lauded as pioneers of educational integration, discuss on screen the day to day harassment they experienced (as well as exclusion from extra-curricular activities, lower academic expectations and social isolation), from both fellow students and teachers.

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