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The Film | The Places | Banishment | Reparations | Sources

The Film

Banished
The filmmaker’s Web site includes news on screenings and links to interviews.

Two Tone Productions
The production company founded by Marco Williams, a black filmmaker, and Whitney Dow, a white filmmaker, to make films that address issues of race and difference.

The Center for Investigative Reporting
CIR is a nonprofit organization that reveals injustice and strengthens democracy through the tools of journalism.

PBS.org: P.O.V.: TWO TOWNS OF JASPER
BANISHED filmmaker Marco Williams’s film about the 1998 murder of a black man by three white men in the small town of Jasper, Texas.

Fanzine: Interview With Director Marco Williams
Read an interview with Williams about the making of BANISHED and the stories involved.

The Places

Silence No More
The Web site of the Harrison, Arkansas-based Community Task Force on Race Relations.

Colombia Missourian: Banished
A 2007 article on Pierce City, Missouri, including the work of journalist Murray Bishoff and interviews with the town’s handful of black residents.

Whitewashed!
A 2007 article about how the Atlanta Journal Constitution deliberately left out reports on racial cleansings, including those in Forsyth County, Georgia.

Banishment

History News Network: Interview with Elliot Jaspin
An interview with Cox Newspapers editor Elliot Jaspin and his research on racial banishments in American history.

Cox News Service: Leave or Die
Elliot Jaspin’s account of racial banishments and an explanation of how he obtained and analyzed his data, plus an interactive account of the expulsions.

Mapping Census 2000: The Geography of Diversity
Get detailed maps on racial diversity based on data from the 2000 U.S. Census.

Sundown Towns: A Hidden Dimension on American Racism
By James W. Loewen
(New Press, 2005)
A sociologist’s study of the thousands of American “sundown towns” that expelled their African American residents and their subsequent efforts to remain all-white.

Buried in the Bitter Waters: The Hidden History of Racial Cleansing in America
By Elliot Jaspin
(Basic Books, 2007)
The book based on Jaspin’s comprehensively researched history of racial banishment in the U.S.

Reparations

John Conyers, Jr.: Reparations
Michigan Representative John Conyers explains H.R. 40, the Commission to Study Reparation Proposals for African Americans Act, which he has re-introduced to Congress since 1989. The site also provides links to the bill and related discussion.

WashingtonPost.com: 1898 Race Clash Ruled a Coup
In 2006, a state-appointed commission declared that North Carolina should provide economic reparations to the descendants of 1898 racial violence and attacks on African American residents.

MSNBC.com: A Push for Slavery Reparations
Read a 2006 article regarding the reparations movement for black Americans.

Reparations Central
Reparations Central is “an online reparations clearinghouse that contains a significant amount of information relating to the issue of reparations for people of African descent.”