Content
LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton has two storylines, both of which show the impoverished life of residents in the American South. The documentary draws the connection — a vicious cycle — between poverty and the lack of education opportunity for black people living in the Mississippi Delta, over 150 years after the abolition of slavery.
Laura Lee (LaLee) Wallace, a great-granddaughter of a slave, is an illiterate 62-year-old woman who has been living all her life in Tallahatchie County, one of the poorest in the United States. She has one surviving son, nine daughters, 38 grandchildren, and 15 great-grandchildren. Her daily living consists of many difficulties: LaLee has to raise many of her grandchildren, her son is continually put in prison, and most of her daughters have to leave Tallahatchie County searching for work. LaLee's life is heavily dependent on the cotton industry; she struggles to earn a living by cooking lunches for people working in local cotton factories.
Reggie Barnes is the superintendent of the West Tallahatchie school system, which is put on probation by the state due to poor standardized test results. The school has the hardship of trying to educate the children of illiterate parents. If it fails to raise the annual standardized test scores, the school will be taken over by the state.
Read more about this topic: La Lee's Kin: The Legacy Of Cotton
Famous quotes containing the word content:
“First it must be known that only a spoken word or a conventional sign is an equivocal or univocal term; therefore a mental content or concept is, strictly speaking, neither equivocal nor univocal.”
—William of Occam (c. 1285–1349)
“... the aspiring immigrant ... is not content to progress alone. Solitary success is imperfect success in his eyes. He must take his family with him as he rises.”
—Mary Antin (1881–1949)
“For believe me!—the secret to harvesting the greatest abundance and the greatest enjoyment from existence is this—living dangerously! Build your cities on the slopes of Vesuvius! Send your ships into uncharted seas! Live at war with your peers and yourselves! Be robbers and conquerors, so long as you cannot be rulers and possessors, you knowing ones! The time will soon be past when you could be content to live hidden in the forests like timid deer.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)