Homecoming

Homecoming is the first film to explore the rural roots of African American life. It chronicles the generations-old struggle of African Americans for land of their own, which pitted them against both the Southern white power structure and the federal agencies responsible for helping them. Director Charlene Gilbert weaves this history together with a fond portrait of her own Georgia farming family into what she calls, "A story of land and love."

Like so much African American history, the Black farmers' story is one of perseverance in the face of prejudice and perjured promises. As part of radical Reconstruction, Congress allotted 45 million acres of land to former slaves, but the rapid reimposition of white supremacy meant that little land was ever actually distributed. Despite formidable obstacles, one million African Americans, mostly former sharecroppers, managed to purchase over 15 million acres of land by 1910.

This achievement was threatened by the agricultural crisis of the 1920s and '30s that led to a raft of farm foreclosures and, eventually, to the system of federal farm loans and subsidies on which all farmers depend today. But the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture was a white man's club, often working hand-in-glove with local bankers and big landowners to dispossess Black farmers of their land. For example, during the '30s, the Southern Tenant Farmers Union had to force the Farm Security Administration to include African American farmers in their tenant purchase program. It was through this program that the filmmaker's grandfather purchased his land, the farm her cousin now owns. 

At the time of the film's release, Black farmers were actively suing the USDA in landmark class-action litigation (Pigford v. Glickman) over decades of discriminatory loan practices. Following those historic settlements, USDA census data recorded approximately 45,000 Black farmers operating over 4.6 million acres across the United States, a testament to ongoing efforts to reclaim and sustain rural legacies despite decades of decline.

Homecoming, is also a mediation on the unfinished work of redeeming the land African Americans worked as slaves for hundreds of years. Playwright August Wilson once asserted that African Americans are a rural people who, after the Great Migration, found themselves in an alien urban milieu. This film argues that Black farms can continue to provide African Americans with a sense of cultural stability and family unity into the 21st century. In a country that has never tried to make African Americans feel at home, this film, like the farming families it celebrates, offers a real "homecoming."

Funded by ITVS