On October 19, 2022, Roderick Red and Claire Winn screened clips from the new documentary film Promised Land: A Story about Mound Bayou as part of the History Is Lunch series.
In 1887 two formerly enslaved cousins bought 840 acres of swampland in the Mississippi Delta. Benjamin T. Green and Isaiah T. Montgomery used the site to found Mound Bayou, which went on to prosper as the largest and most self-sufficient all-Black town in the United States.
“Mound Bayou had its own merchants, banks, public schools, sawmill, and cotton gins, and in 1942 it even opened its own hospital—the only one in the central Delta,” said Red, the film’s director. “But the town began to decline in the mid-1960s, like many other towns throughout the region.”
“Promised Land not only tells the history of Mound Bayou, it celebrates the achievements of its residents and contributes to the conversation about its future,” said Claire Winn, director of programs for the Mississippi Heritage Trust, which funded the project alongside the National Park Service and others.
Roderick Red is the CEO of RED SQUARED. The Jackson native earned his degree in broadcast production from the University of Southern Mississippi then started a video production company specializing in content creation and documentary storytelling for local nonprofits and companies. Red directed the film The Defenders, a documentary about the attorneys who took part in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, and has directed and produced projects for NBC, the Mississippi Department of Health, The Atlanta History Center, Entergy and others.
History Is Lunch is sponsored by the John and Lucy Shackelford Charitable Fund of the Community Foundation for Mississippi. The weekly lecture series of the Mississippi Department of Archives and History explores different aspects of the state's past. The hour-long programs are held in the Craig H. Neilsen Auditorium of the Museum of Mississippi History and Mississippi Civil Rights Museum building at 222 North Street in Jackson and livestreamed on YouTube and Facebook.
