100 Years From Mississippi

In 1915, Mamie Lang Kirkland was a child when a mob in Ellisville, Mississippi tore apart her family's night, forcing them to flee while a friend of her father, John Hartfield, was brutally lynched. Those memories have shaped her life, and she long vowed never to return to the town of that terror. A century later her youngest child, filmmaker Tarabu Betserai Kirkland, brings Mamie back to Ellisville. The film follows their return as Mamie recounts what she remembers, honors those who were lost to racial violence, and bears witness to the mix of fear, courage, and quiet hope that sustained her generation. The narrative is personal, intimate, and focused on testimony rather than sensational detail.

Directed by Tarabu Betserai Kirkland and released in 2021, the documentary centers on Mamie Kirkland as herself, with voiceover poetry by Barry Shabaka Henley and Joyce Guy, and dramatized narration by Robb Derringer. It is presented as a first-person family project.

There are no widely reported major awards or Academy nominations linked to this film; public award information is limited. If it screened at festivals or received smaller prizes, that coverage is not broadly documented in major databases.

The film adds a personal dimension to ongoing conversations about lynching and racial terror in American history, preserving a rare living memory from 1915. Seeing an elderly witness return to the site of a traumatic event gives the subject matter an immediacy that often gets lost in textbooks, and it has the potential to resonate with educators and historians interested in memory and testimony.

Critical coverage and mainstream reviews are limited, but the movie's central concerns are clear: memory, intergenerational trauma, resilience, and the role of storytelling in healing. Its approach is quiet and reflective, prioritizing oral history and the moral weight of remembering over dramatic reconstruction or polemic.