Natchez filmmakers donate ‘The Parchman Ordeal’ to JSU’s Margaret Walker Center

Film and original interviews preserved, now available to the public
 

by Mississippi Monitor | Apr 7, 2026 | Capital/River

By Roscoe Barnes III, Ph.D., Visit Natchez

Natchez filmmakers Robert Morgan and Darrell S. White donated "The Parchman Ordeal: The Untold Story," co-produced with the late director G. Mark LaFrancis, to the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University for preservation and public access on YouTube. This earlier photo shows the three producers (from left): Darrell White, G. Mark LaFrancis, and Robert Morgan. Photo courtesy of Robert Morgan (Click on image to enlarge.)

NATCHEZ, Miss. -- “The Parchman Ordeal: The Untold Story,” a documentary highlighting a pivotal chapter in the Civil Rights Movement in Natchez, has found a permanent home at the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University. The film is now preserved in the university’s archives and available for free viewing on the Center’s YouTube channel.
 
The Margaret Walker Center acquired the film and its accompanying original interview footage through a donation from Natchez filmmakers Robert Morgan and Darrell S. White, who co-produced the film with director G. Mark LaFrancis. LaFrancis died in June 2024 following a long battle with cancer.
 
“The Parchman Ordeal” premiered in October 2015 at the City Auditorium in Natchez, marking the 50th anniversary of the 1965 civil rights events it depicts. The documentary presents the story of African Americans arrested in Natchez for attempting to march for their civil rights. They were later jailed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman in 1965, where they endured severe abuse.
 
“The Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University is extremely pleased to be adding the documentary film, ‘The Parchman Ordeal: The Untold Story,’ as well as its accompanying original interview footage to our oral history collection,” said Alissa Rae Funderburk, oral historian at the Margaret Walker Center.
 
“Though we have an extensive collection of civil rights interviews in our archive, this documentary sheds light on an important moment in the struggle and brings the stories of Parchman’s brave survivors to the forefront,” Funderburk said. “We hope that by providing access to such a thought-provoking film, we can remind our audience of the value of storytelling and the power of truth.”

Morgan said he is “deeply appreciative” of the university’s commitment to preserving and sharing Natchez’s history.
 

“We thank the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University for preserving the documentary and making it accessible,” Morgan said. “Honoring the roughly 150 young men and women arrested for parading without a permit during the civil rights era inspires future generations to boldly stand up against unconstitutional injustice.”

White echoed those sentiments. “The filmmakers’ mission was to accurately document the sacrifices made by those who took a stand on behalf of others, and the price they paid for their efforts,” he said. “We salute the Margaret Walker Center of Jackson State University for their commitment in helping to tell this forgotten and previously untold story.”
 
Lynsey Gilbert, interim director of Visit Natchez, applauded the decision by Morgan and White to partner with the Margaret Walker Center.
 
“This is an important documentary of Natchez’s history that highlights both the struggle and triumph of our local residents during the Civil Rights Movement,” she said. “Visit Natchez was pleased to assist the filmmakers with this new arrangement with the Margaret Walker Center. We’re especially excited to know ‘The Parchman Ordeal’ will be professionally preserved and made available to a much wider audience.”
 
In 2017, “The Parchman Ordeal” was recognized as the Most Transformative Film at the Crossroads Film Festival. The film was produced in partnership with the Natchez Museum of African American History and Culture and was funded in part by a grant from the Mississippi Humanities Council. In addition to being aired on Mississippi Public Broadcasting, it became the basis for the book, “The Parchman Ordeal: 1965 Natchez Civil Rights Injustice” (The History Press, 2018).
 
“The Parchman Ordeal: The Untold Story” can be viewed on the Margaret Walker Center’s YouTube channel: https://youtu.be/yJqTXt2tEp4
 
About the Margaret Walker Center
 
The Margaret Walker Center is an archive and museum dedicated to the preservation, interpretation, and dissemination of African American history and culture. Founded as the Institute for the Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People by Margaret Walker in 1968, the Center seeks to honor her academic, artistic, and activist legacy through its archival collections, exhibits, and public programs.
 
 See more at this link: https://www.themississippimonitor.com/natchez-filmmakers-donate-the-parchman-ordeal-to-jsus-margaret-walker-center/ 

Anne Moody is spotlighted on Mississippi History Now homepage

I'm happy to see my article featured on the Mississippi History Now homepage! Anne Moody (1940-2015), the powerful civil rights activist and author of the classic memoir Coming of Age in Mississippi, is currently spotlighted right on the front page — and I’m proud that my piece about her is part of this collection.

What an honor to contribute to this outstanding resource from the Mississippi Historical Society and MDAH.

Take a look: https://mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/anne-moody-1940-2015-civil-rights-activist-and-author-coming-age-mississippi

 

Ibrahima marker to be dedicated April 8

Top of the Morning column published in The Natchez Democrat (Wednesday, April 1, 2026, page 4A)

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Top of the Morning

Prince Ibrahima marker dedicated April 8

 

By David Dreyer

 
Two hundred and thirty-eight years ago, Abdul Rahman aka Prince Ibrahima was captured in an ambush in the fog of war. He was 26 years old, educated in Timbuctoo and already a military hero in his father’s Kingdom of Futa Jallon, an independent nation in the mountains of today’s Republic of Guinea in West Africa.
 
He was sold into slavery, brought to Natchez in the bowels of a slave ship, and sold under-the-hill to a man his own age who took him to his plantation north of town at Foster’s Fields on Pine Ridge. He was held here during the terms of our first six presidents of the United States, although initially Natchez was then under the rule of Spain.
 
Forty years later, at the age of 66, he was allowed to travel north to Washington, D.C. on his return to Africa with his American-born wife Isabella, but they had to leave their children behind in hopes he could raise enough money to free them as well.
 
After a year raising money, he felt compelled to leave and shortly thereafter died in what became the new nation of Liberia. Two of his sons, including the family of one of them, also reached Liberia the following year and intermarried with local people.
 
Meanwhile his other children were divided among the slaveholder’s wife, children and sons-in-law in the Natchez District and southern Louisiana, not to experience freedom for another 35 years.
 
Generations later in 1977, a young historian, Terry Alford of Indianola, Mississippi, published a book about his life called “Prince Among Slaves.” A generation after that, Artemus Gaye, a refugee from the Liberian Civil War, discovered that book and his own descent from Prince Ibrahima.
 
In 2003, Gaye held an Ibrahima Fest at the Natchez Community Center, bringing together scholars, descendants and most importantly, an American Muslim filmmaker, Alex Kronemer, who would tell Ibrahima’s story on film for the American Experience series on PBS. That would renew stories by other descendants of their descent from an African Prince.
 
On Wednesday, April 8, at 11:30 a.m., a marker will be dedicated near the dock under-the-hill to commemorate his life as an identifiable African who was brought here enslaved and whose family now has a 300-year-old history which connects them directly to a place and family in Africa. Few descendants of enslaved African Americans are able to do that because of the anonymity imposed by slavery.
 
This marker to an enslaved African represents all of them, many who remain nameless, for what they did to create and develop this city, state, and nation. It will greet the many visitors to Natchez who arrive and depart in comfort on riverboats to see what the labor of thousands of Africans and their descendants have created here in the Natchez District and neighboring Louisiana.

------------
 
David Dreyer is a local historian and Natchez resident.
 
See more at this link: https://www.natchezdemocrat.com/opinion/ibrahima-marker-to-be-dedicated-april-8-624b1ef9

Images from Natchez Powwow 2026

 

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Bruce Wayne Klinekole II is featured here. He is a Native American character actor of Comanche/Apache Tribe of Oklahoma/Mescalero Apache ancestry.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Oscar-nominated songwriter Scott George of Hominy, Oklahoma (center, wearing the white hat), is pictured at the drum during a performance at the Natchez Powwow on Saturday, March 28, 2026. To his left sits Eddie Yellowfish (Osage-Otoe-Comanche) of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who served as head singer of the Southern Drum.

George composed “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People),” which was featured in Martin Scorsese’s film Killers of the Flower Moon. On Sunday, March 10, 2024, George and the Osage Tribal Singers — including Yellowfish — performed the song live at the 96th Academy Awards.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

I’m pictured here with Cherokee Nation flutist Tommy Wildcat at Natchez Powwow 2026.

(Click on image to enlarge.)

I'm pictured here with Natchez Police Chief Lee Best at Natchez Powwow 2026.

Bombed for a Petition: David Bacon Jr.

Top of the Morning column published in The Natchez Democrat (Wednesday, March 25, 2026, page 4A)  

(Click on image to enlarge.)

Top of the Morning

 

Bombed for a Petition: David Bacon Jr.

 

By Roscoe Barnes III

 

Paul Bacon says he was seven when his father's truck was bombed by the Ku Klux Klan in 1955 in the driveway of their home at 12 Lincoln Street.

 
Paul and his family were in bed when they heard a loud explosion that shook their home and blew out windows in several houses.
 
The bombing came amid escalating intimidation following a petition to desegregate the local schools, according to Paul’s nephew, Willie J. Epps Jr., Chief Magistrate Judge in the Western District of Missouri.
 
No one was injured, and no one was ever charged. But the bombing and other threats by white residents opposed to integration caused a setback in the Black community’s fight for civil rights.
 
Paul’s father, David French Bacon Jr., was president of the Natchez NAACP. He was targeted by white supremacists because of his fight for civil rights.
 
After the 1954 Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. Board of Education declared school segregation unconstitutional, the local NAACP circulated a desegregation petition in Natchez and Adams County.
 
When the petition appeared in The Natchez Democrat, the signers became targets of white racists. Some lost jobs, some fled town, and most of them withdrew their names under pressure.
 
The bombing was one of many stories Paul shared about his father's work when we met in October 2025. When he mentioned the petition, it triggered a memory.
 
"Wait," I said. "That was your father?”
 
I suddenly realized I had seen his name before.
 
Whenever I encounter names of local people in history books, I yearn to meet them and learn more about their stories. I also want to thank them for their sacrifice in the struggle for civil rights and share their stories.
 
Paul’s father is mentioned in Charles C. Bolton’s book, “The Hardest Deal of All: The Battle over School Integration in Mississippi, 1870-1980” (University Press of Mississippi, 2007). Bolton writes:
 
“In Natchez, although ‘enthusiasm was high’ within the black community as the local NAACP launched its school petition drive in mid-July, after the publication of the petition and its almost one hundred signers in the Natchez Democrat, three-fifths of the petitioners reconsidered their action. Requests poured into the offices of the newspaper and the school board asking that names be excised from the petition; many of the black parents claimed … that they had misunderstood what they were signing. David Bacon Jr., who worked for a white-owned business, renounced his endorsement of the document and quit the NAACP.”
 
He is also mentioned in Jack E. Davis’ book, “Race Against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez since 1930” (Louisiana State University Press, 2001).
 
Davis notes David presented the petition to School Board President R. Brent Forman. When it appeared in the paper, Natchez whites organized a White Citizens’ Council to resist integration.
 
The school board rejected the petition. “Even David Bacon, apparently feeling pressure from his employer, withdrew his name and resigned as chapter president (of the NAACP),” writes Davis, adding, “the Natchez branch disbanded after the petition defeat.”
 
Paul says his father withdrew for the sake of his family. “There were five of us, and we were not affluent,” he says. “My father had been working at Armstrong Tire and Rubber Company, but he lost his job when his name was seen on the petition. He continued working at Cole’s as a utility man.”
 
Despite the petition’s defeat, Paul sees lessons in his father’s experience. “It shows that your integrity is most important, as is your history and your family.  Most essential is your faith in the Lord.”
 
------------

ROSCOE BARNES III, Ph.D., is the cultural heritage tourism manager at Visit Natchez.

Ser Boxley donates ‘Forks of the Road’ exhibition to Alcorn State University

Public lecture and exhibit set for March 27 in Port Gibson

Natchez, MS, USA / ListenUpYall.com

Mar 23, 2026 | 3:20 PM

 

Ser Seshsh Ab Heter-C.M.Boxley

PORT GIBSON, Miss. – Ser Seshsh Ab Heter-C. M. Boxley has donated his Forks of the Road exhibition to the Southwest Mississippi Center for Culture & Learning at Alcorn State University, Lorman Campus, announced the Center’s director, Dr. Garry Lewis.
 
“I am honored to entrust this research to Alcorn State University,” said Ser Boxley. “The Center’s commitment to cultural preservation ensures that the stories connected to the Forks of the Road will continue to educate, challenge, and inspire.”
 
Lewis emphasized the importance of Ser Boxley’s work. “Ser Boxley’s donation strengthens ongoing collaborations between Alcorn State University and regional heritage organizations committed to documenting African American history, preserving sacred sites, and expanding public access to historically grounded scholarship,” he said.
 
To recognize Ser Boxley’s decades‑long contributions as a preservationist and researcher, the Center will host a public lecture and presentation of the Forks of the Road exhibit from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Friday, March 27, at the Claiborne County Welcome & Heritage Center, 210 Walnut St. in Port Gibson. The event is free and open to the public.
 
Dr. Roscoe Barnes III, cultural heritage tourism manager at Visit Natchez, will participate as a panelist and share remarks during the program.
 
Lewis applauded Ser Boxley for donating “his extensive artifact research and documentation on the historic ‘African/European Roots of the Underground Railroad and Forks of the Road’” to the Center. Lewis said the Forks of the Road slave market site is one of the most important locations tied to the domestic slave trade in the Deep Southwest.
 
For several years, the Forks of the Road exhibition was displayed at the Natchez Visitor Center on Canal Street until 2022, when the facility closed for renovation. The exhibition will have a new home with the Southwest Mississippi Center, according to Lewis.
 
In addition to his research, the donation includes Ser Boxley’s interpretive materials, historical analyses, and cultural documentation that illuminate the lived experiences of enslaved people trafficked through Natchez and the broader Mississippi region, Lewis said. He noted: “Ser Boxley’s work has been instrumental in shaping public understanding of the Forks of the Road as a site of memory, resilience, and truth-telling.”

In Lewis’ view, Ser Boxley’s contribution is more than a collection of research. “It is a gift of truth, legacy, and cultural responsibility. His dedication ensures that future generations can study, honor, and learn from the stories that shaped Southwest Mississippi and the nation.”
Lewis said the Center will preserve, curate, and integrate the donated materials into its educational programming, community partnerships, and student research initiatives.
 
“The collection will support Alcorn State University’s mission to advance cultural literacy, historical awareness, and community engagement across the region,” he said. “Ser Boxley, whose decades of research have helped illuminate the history of one of the most significant slave‑trading sites in the Deep Southwest, will share insights into his archival work, the importance of historical truth‑telling, and the ongoing efforts to preserve African American heritage across Southwest Mississippi.”
 
Lewis encourages Alcorn alumni, community members, visitors, and educators to attend Friday’s program and “engage directly with Ser Boxley’s scholarship and to deepen their understanding of the region’s cultural and historical landscape.”
 
See more at this link: https://listenupyall.com/2026/03/23/ser-boxley-donates-forks-of-the-road-exhibition-to-alcorn-state-university/
 

Cherokee Nation flutist Tommy Wildcat to perform at Natchez Powwow March 28-29

By Roscoe Barnes III
Natchez, MS, USA / ListenUpYall.com
Mar 23, 2026 | 8:25 AM

Tommy Wildcat
Photo courtesy of Tommy Wildcat (Click on image to enlarge.)

NATCHEZ, Miss. — Tommy Wildcat, a Cherokee Nation flute player, will perform at the Natchez Powwow on Saturday and Sunday, March 28 and 29, 2026, on the Natchez Bluff. Admission is free and open to the public.

Dr. Chuck Borum, who chairs the Natchez Powwow, said Wildcat is a great musician, and his performance will be an exciting and welcome addition to this year’s lineup. “Wildcat is extremely gifted as a musician and highly respected,” Borum said.

Wildcat, who hails from Tahlequah, Oklahoma, is a Cherokee Nation “National Treasure,” a title recognizing master artisans and tradition bearers who preserve Cherokee art, language, and culture. He has shared his work at cultural events and performances across the country.

Wildcat and his family were featured in the September 2005 issue of National Geographic magazine. In 1995, he appeared in the American Express “Charge Against Hunger” commercial.

Wildcat is a graduate of Northeastern State University where he earned a bachelor’s degree in Cherokee Cultural Studies. He won the 2002 Native American Music Award for Flutist of the Year for his album “Pow-Wow Flutes.”

Wildcat said performing in Natchez is a privilege he really appreciates. “I’m very grateful and honored to be at the Natchez Mississippi Powwow this year,” he said.

The Natchez Powwow, held annually since the late 1980s, celebrates Native American culture through dance, music, crafts, and more. It is presented as a wholesome family-friendly event for local residents and visitors.

Program lineup

In addition to Wildcat, this year’s powwow will feature Eddie Yellowfish, Osage-Otoe-Comanche, of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who will serve as the head singer of the Southern Drum.

Others featured include Frank Carson, Otoe-Pawnee, of Stillwater, Oklahoma, as master of ceremonies; and Darsh DeSilva of Round Rock, Texas, as arena director; and Free “Bird” Kasler, Otoe, of Chouteau, Oklahoma, as head man dancer.

The program will include Wonzie Kline Kole, Mescalero Apache-Comanche of Dallas as the head lady dancer; and James Barton of Summerville, South Carolina, as the head gourd dancer.

Oscar-nominated songwriter Scott George of Hominy, Oklahoma, will support Yellowfish on the drums. George composed “Wahzhazhe (A Song for My People),” that was featured in Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon.” He and Yellowfish performed the song with the Osage Tribal Singers at the 96th Academy Awards in March 2024.

Powwow schedule

Saturday March 28, 2026

9 a.m. – Food, Craft, and Farmers’ Market Vendors open; 12:30 p.m. — Gourd Dance; 2 p.m. — Grand Entry and Intertribal Dancing; 4 p.m. — Camp Feed for Singers, Dancers, and Family/Friends; 6 p.m. — Gourd Dance; 7 p.m. — Grand Entry and Intertribal Dancing; 9 p.m. – Closing

Sunday March 29, 2026

 9 a.m. — Food and Craft Vendors open; 12:30 p.m. — Gourd Dance; 2 p.m. — Grand Entry and Intertribal Dancing

Alcohol is prohibited at the powwow. It is not allowed in the powwow area or in the trader or food vending area. Attendees are encouraged to bring lawn chairs for seating.

Borum said the powwow is financially supported by local Natchez businesses, individuals, and the Natchez Convention Promotion Commission/Visit Natchez.

For more information, visit https://www.natchezpowwow.com or email Powwow Chairman Dr. Chuck Borum at cborum@hotmail.com. 

See more at this link:

https://listenupyall.com/2026/03/23/cherokee-nation-flutist-tommy-wildcat-to-perform-at-natchez-powwow-march-28-29/