LaLee's Kin: The Legacy of Cotton

2001 • Directed by

Deborah Dickson

Documentary

For as long as she can remember, LaLee Wallace's family has picked cotton.

This heartbreaking documentary depicts the extreme poverty of an African-American family and their Mississippi Delta school district. LaLee's Kin takes us deep into the Mississippi Delta and the intertwined lives of LaLee Wallace, a great-grandmother struggling to hold her world together in the face of dire poverty, and Reggie Barnes, superintendent of the embattled West Tallahatchie School System. The film explores the painful legacy of slavery and sharecropping in the Delta.